Painting a soccer ball

My boyfriend's birthday is coming up (in 8 months...none the less), and I was just tossing around some ideas for what I should get him. I arrived at the idea of painting a soccer ball because he's a HUGE soccer fan.

Now, I have a couple of designs sketched out already, but they're not definite.

The first one is of a series of building protruding from the ocean, followed by a sunset/night sky in the background. The second design is of the ocean, a boat, and the milky way galaxy + constellations as the background. 

I'm sort of leaning towards the second design. It's simple and lovely, to me anyway.

Time to think technically- I was doing some research on the web, and I couldn't find ANYTHING about painting soccer balls, but then again, who routinely paints soccer balls? Since soccer balls have a hard and shiny surface, I was thinking that it may be a little difficult to prime. I may have to sand the surface (if it's even possible) of the soccer ball first and apply gesso on top to create a base. I would paint it with acrylics. I will have some planning out/ research to do....except my only problem is that there isn't much stuff on the web about it! 

I might just have to do a trial run and see what happens.