n December 2006, FourFourTwo joined the Iraq national team for what many feared would be their final year of competition. With bombs exploding every day, in a country ripped apart by civil war, we shadowed the team through training camps in northern Iraq to the West Asian Championships in Jordan and finally to Asian Cup glory... This is their story.
What started as unbridled celebration ended in mass murder. No sooner had keeper Noor Sabri saved the deciding penalty against South Korea in the semi-finals of the Asian Cup than thousands of fans poured out into the stifling Iraqi summer to dance and sing. For a brief, all too fleeting moment, the crowd was united, firing celebratory bullets high into the late afternoon sky, the tracer fire from Kurd, Shia and Sunni indistinguishable from each other.
But then football has a strange way of defying convention in Iraq. With the country gripped by warfare pitting Muslim versus Muslim, secular versus religious, football is the only thing anyone can agree on. As the government slowly collapses and the army undermines itself with internal sectarian militias, the last symbol of nationalism, the last rallying point around which people feel proud to fly the Iraqi flag, is football. Which attracts the insurgents. As the revellers rejoiced, a suicide bomber quietly approached an ice cream stand in the well-heeled Mansour district of Baghdad, destroying himself and 30 football fans with him.
That night 20 more fans were killed across town in suicide attacks, as were five more, accidentally, when gravity reasserted its will and the bullets of victory fell back to earth. It’s tragic, but for Iraq, and Iraqi football in particular, it was just another bloody footnote. From the barbarous rule of Saddam Hussein and his son Uday, who was in charge of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, through to the invasion and counter insurgency, the Iraq team has had to overcome obstacles that would have destroyed any other: torture, murder, kidnap, extortion and now, finally, homelessness.
Yet the team has always excelled. Rarely in recent times have the Iraqis been outside FIFA’s top 40. They briefly graced the world stage at Mexico 86, reached the semi-finals of the Olympics in 2004 and the final of the Asian Games in 2006. But their crowning achievement would be winning the Asian Cup. The question is, when this golden generation of Iraq’s “Lions of Mesopotamia” leave the stage, will there be anyone to replace them?
It’s mid-June on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan and the hottest summer for 90 years in the tiny Hashemite kingdom. One half of the King Abdullah Stadium is cloaked in shadow, while the other is bathed in unforgiving mid-afternoon sunshine. The Iraqi team stands in the shade waiting for training and the first of Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira’s steps towards the Asian Cup final.
The team is here for the West Asian Championship (WAC), a tournament that reads like a who’s who of Middle East conflict: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Technically Jordan are the hosts, but this might as well be a home tournament for the Iraqis given that the team plays all its home matches here and there are up to a million Iraqi refugees living in Jordan.
Jorvan – slight, with round glasses, greying stubble and a twinkling smile – taps his foot as he waits for the Jordanians to vacate the pitch so he can put his Iraqi team through its paces. He’s only been in charge for a few weeks and, with Asia’s biggest football tournament just 14 days away, every training session is vital. There’s also the tricky prospect of a match against Palestine the next day, which they must win to reach the semi-finals of the WAC.
The Jordanians are running late, though, after insisting that, as always, they pray towards Mecca before training. Given the sectarian strife just over Jordan’s eastern border, the Iraqis refuse to follow suit. “I think I have the most difficult job in the world,” Jorvan offers absent-mindedly as he watches his rivals dodge cones. “I have to deal with these boys with many, many problems: social, political, internal. Most of these people don’t know where they are. Every minute the situation changes.”
Jorvan, a Muslim convert, is a veteran of Middle Eastern football, having coached most of his career in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Morocco. He was fourth choice for the job, and he’s been given only a two-month contract, but it was preferable to having an Iraqi coach. The last one, Akram Ahmed Salman, quit after receiving two death threats – one from a Sunni group, the other from a Shia organisation. He was later reinstated and, proving that there’s no sentimentality in football, sacked for a poor showing in January’s Gulf Cup.
Still, being Brazilian – and never having set foot in Iraq – hasn’t inoculated Jorvan from the realities of coaching the team. “We lost our physio, two days before we got here,” he explains as his charges trot onto the field. “A bomb exploded in Baghdad and he was passing by. He was on his way to the travel agent to buy his ticket to come here.”
Talk to the players and it becomes clear that these macabre tales of cruelty and bad luck are common. Everyone has lost family and friends to the war. Keeper Sabri saw his brother-in-law killed a few weeks ago. Midfielder Haitham Kadim watched gunmen storm the pitch during a match in Baghdad and shoot his friend in the heart. Hawar Mullah Mohammad, a Kurd who plays up front, had to leave his home in Baghdad and sign for Al Ain, an oasis club in the middle of a desert in the UAE, to ensure his own safety. “I’d lost two members of my family,” he explains. “It’s difficult when you have no safety. Cars explode all the time. I had to pick up my two guns before going to practice, because I’d been threatened. You can buy guns anywhere in Baghdad. You need them. I don’t go back any more.”
The threat is twofold. On the one hand, players are targets for representing a unity that insurgents want to undermine. On the other, footballers are high-profile fodder for criminal gangs. A kidnapped national team player can be traded to his family for a high price, anywhere up to $6 million according to one player. Given the dangers, it’s no surprise that Iraq’s footballers are fleeing their homeland. On the team bus back to the hotel, striker Mohammed Nasser and midfielder Nashat Akram talk business. Both have negotiated their way out of Iraq: Mohammed to Apollon Limassol in Cyprus, Nashat to Al Shabab in Saudi Arabia. The key, they say, is getting an agent. “Most Iraqis don’t have one but it’s crucial because he can drop you in any country,” says Nashat.
While in Europe some agents are viewed as leeches, for Iraqis they are the only hope of escape – even if they make grandiose claims that won’t be fulfilled. “No one can see me play in Cyprus,” complains Mohammad. “So I sacked my agent. I have one at the moment, an Iranian, and he’s promised me a top-four club in Greece, England or Spain.”
Nashat, too, was promised a top-four club in Europe. What he got was a visit from Sunderland, who allegedly sent scouts to check him out. “Iraqis can play anywhere in the world, but it would be a dream to play for Roy Keane. I sent them my DVD and, Inshallah [God willing], I’ll hear something.”
Captain Younis Mahmoud is hot property, but the young striker, top-scorer in the star-filled Qatari league and scorer of 30 goals in 49 internationals, is unlikely to go to Europe soon. “Of course I want to play in England or France,” he says, “but my family is my priority and if I sign for a club in Europe, I can’t take my family. In Qatar, it’s no problem: they say ‘Bring everyone!’”
Not everyone is lucky enough to get out. Second-choice goalkeeper Ahmed Ali is one of four players who ply their trade in the Iraqi league with Al Zawraa in Baghdad. Ali’s day goes something like this:
“I wake up at 9am, I go to practice at 3pm, go home at 6pm, lock the door and don’t go out.” Suggest that he must have some security at games and the players around him howl with laughter. “I earn $100, a bodyguard gets $1000. I’m not David Beckham! My friend was shot dead during a game once, and they also dropped bombs, five of them, mortars I think, onto the field. It’s very dangerous.”
For those who remain in Iraq, there’s only one safe destination: the northern Kurdish region and its capital Erbil. Although in the West, we’re bombarded daily with images of destruction in Iraq, most of the violence is around Baghdad. The Kurdish region is booming. For a decade the Kurds have had a measure of self-rule with their regional government taking care of security. Property prices are rocketing, shopping malls are being thrown up and there’s little sectarian violence. When FourFourTwo visited Erbil in January, we discovered something that could have been out of a Pentagon wet dream. Sunni, Shia, Kurd and Christian living side my side, imbued with a self-confidence to look to the future. Strangers would shake our hands and thank “Mr Blair” while a twice-weekly flight on Austrian Airlines now runs between Erbil and Vienna. They even have their own tourism minister.
With Baghdad so unstable, the league has been scaled down and moved to the Kurdish areas. Which is good news for some. Erbil FC, a previously mediocre club, can now pick off Iraq’s best players and are dominating the local scene. They won the championship last season.
Assistant coach Rahim Hamed moved to Erbil when he received one death threat too many. “I got a letter that said we will kill your children and… make something… with my daughter. They fired at my house twice. So I moved to Erbil. I’m Shia. I don’t care, I’m Muslim and Iraqi. But now I sit in a small flat in a dirty area. It’s expensive. My rent is more than my brother’s rent in Holland.”
For all the hardship, he doesn’t have the idolised view of Saddam-era Iraq that many now have. Then again, he has good reason. Rahim was Iraq’s star striker in the 1980s and played at the 1986 World Cup sporting a large perm in honour of his hero, Kevin Keegan. He saw first-hand the brutality of the Hussein clan. Uday, Saddam’s bloodthirsty son, installed himself as head of the Olympic Committee and ruled it with his father’s uncompromising iron fist. If the team played badly, he’d threaten to chop off the striker’s legs. If training didn’t go well, he’d lock them in a cage. When the team failed to reach USA 94, he made them play with a concrete ball. Failure to qualify in 2002 resulted in the players having their feet whipped. Stories trickled out from the few sportsmen who managed to defect, but the true horror of Uday’s rule only came to light when the US stormed Iraq’s Olympic HQ in 2003. In the basement they found a rack and a medieval torture device used to rip open a man’s anus.
“You knew that if you didn’t play well, Uday would do something bad,” says Rahim, running his hands through his hair. “After one game he shaved everybody’s hair. That’s when I lost my perm.”
The Iraqi team bus pulls through Amman’s city limits, rocking to ear-splitting Arabic music. The players dance and shout in delight as a song by Iraqi singer Hussam Al Rassam starts up. The only thing you can hear over the sound of the music is the sound of laughter. Jorvan surveys the scene and gives a wry smile. “We have to give the Iraqi people a good mirror. Inside the national team there are no differences between Shia and Sunni. I was asked, how can you coach Iraq? I said ‘I don’t have ammo, no grenades, no M45, no axe.’ I’d like victory to bring peace to Iraq. They don’t have to pay me if I can help bring peace.”
The next day, Iraq beat Palestine 1-0 before putting Syria to the sword 3-0. The tournament ends with a game against arch-rivals Iran, who, spurred on by the boos of the 8000-strong Iraqi support, win 2-1. After the match, Nashat consoles his team-mates while Younis – topless and bearing a tattoo of Iraq on his left arm – harries the players to thank the fans. Mohammed Nasser is distraught, in tears, unable to speak. Finally he chokes out what he wants to say: “The Asian Cup, we still have the Asian Cup.”
Their opening game a week later is a shaky 1-1 draw with Thailand. Then Iraq pull off the shock of the tournament, beating Australia 3-1. Vietnam fall in the quarters, then South Korea in the semis, sparking celebration and tragedy back home.
On July 29, the Lions of Mesopotamia stride out into the Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Jakarta to face Saudi Arabia. Younis is the hero, heading the game’s only goal and sparking joyous scenes. Even the neutrals celebrate Iraq’s victory as if it were their own and the world’s press hail the achievement as one of sport’s great romantic stories.
Back home, the fear of attack isn’t enough to dampen the mood. Crowds celebrate from Erbil to Basra and bullets fly once more, this time with no reprisals. Increased security measures mean just seven people are killed by insurgents, but it would have been many more had police not averted an attempted suicide bombing in Baghdad. The risk of such activity means celebrations on the team’s return home are regrettably subdued, the PM’s reception held in the heavily-fortified green zone in the centre of Iraq, away from most civilians.
One person who isn’t here is the hero, Younis. “I wish I could go back to Baghdad to celebrate, but who will secure my life?” asks the captain.
Typically, every silver lining has a cloud. Jorvan quits after the match, despite pleas from fans, players and even the PM. “If my contract was for six months and not for two, they would have had to take me to the hospital for crazy people,” he explains.
Replacing the coach is the least of Iraq’s problems. This generation of footballers is likely to be the last to escape the chaos that grips their country. With a piecemeal league, thousands dying every month and thousands more fleeing, no one can see where the stars of the future will come from. “How can they come through? Where can they train?” asks Jorvan. “They will miss one or two generations because of the war. How can they develop sport in Iraq? Did you hear about the boys from taekwondo? It could happen with any player here.”
The fate of the “boys from taekwondo” illustrates the dangers any young sportsmen and women face in Iraq today. In 2006, 15 athletes aged between 18 and 26 were kidnapped on their way to a training camp in Jordan. A year later, and hours before the Iran-Iraq West Asian Championship game, their remains were found in a ditch near Ramadi. All had been shot in the head.
But then football has a strange way of defying convention in Iraq. With the country gripped by warfare pitting Muslim versus Muslim, secular versus religious, football is the only thing anyone can agree on. As the government slowly collapses and the army undermines itself with internal sectarian militias, the last symbol of nationalism, the last rallying point around which people feel proud to fly the Iraqi flag, is football. Which attracts the insurgents. As the revellers rejoiced, a suicide bomber quietly approached an ice cream stand in the well-heeled Mansour district of Baghdad, destroying himself and 30 football fans with him.
That night 20 more fans were killed across town in suicide attacks, as were five more, accidentally, when gravity reasserted its will and the bullets of victory fell back to earth. It’s tragic, but for Iraq, and Iraqi football in particular, it was just another bloody footnote. From the barbarous rule of Saddam Hussein and his son Uday, who was in charge of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, through to the invasion and counter insurgency, the Iraq team has had to overcome obstacles that would have destroyed any other: torture, murder, kidnap, extortion and now, finally, homelessness.
Yet the team has always excelled. Rarely in recent times have the Iraqis been outside FIFA’s top 40. They briefly graced the world stage at Mexico 86, reached the semi-finals of the Olympics in 2004 and the final of the Asian Games in 2006. But their crowning achievement would be winning the Asian Cup. The question is, when this golden generation of Iraq’s “Lions of Mesopotamia” leave the stage, will there be anyone to replace them?
It’s mid-June on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan and the hottest summer for 90 years in the tiny Hashemite kingdom. One half of the King Abdullah Stadium is cloaked in shadow, while the other is bathed in unforgiving mid-afternoon sunshine. The Iraqi team stands in the shade waiting for training and the first of Brazilian coach Jorvan Vieira’s steps towards the Asian Cup final.
The team is here for the West Asian Championship (WAC), a tournament that reads like a who’s who of Middle East conflict: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Technically Jordan are the hosts, but this might as well be a home tournament for the Iraqis given that the team plays all its home matches here and there are up to a million Iraqi refugees living in Jordan.
Jorvan – slight, with round glasses, greying stubble and a twinkling smile – taps his foot as he waits for the Jordanians to vacate the pitch so he can put his Iraqi team through its paces. He’s only been in charge for a few weeks and, with Asia’s biggest football tournament just 14 days away, every training session is vital. There’s also the tricky prospect of a match against Palestine the next day, which they must win to reach the semi-finals of the WAC.
The Jordanians are running late, though, after insisting that, as always, they pray towards Mecca before training. Given the sectarian strife just over Jordan’s eastern border, the Iraqis refuse to follow suit. “I think I have the most difficult job in the world,” Jorvan offers absent-mindedly as he watches his rivals dodge cones. “I have to deal with these boys with many, many problems: social, political, internal. Most of these people don’t know where they are. Every minute the situation changes.”
Jorvan, a Muslim convert, is a veteran of Middle Eastern football, having coached most of his career in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Egypt and Morocco. He was fourth choice for the job, and he’s been given only a two-month contract, but it was preferable to having an Iraqi coach. The last one, Akram Ahmed Salman, quit after receiving two death threats – one from a Sunni group, the other from a Shia organisation. He was later reinstated and, proving that there’s no sentimentality in football, sacked for a poor showing in January’s Gulf Cup.
Still, being Brazilian – and never having set foot in Iraq – hasn’t inoculated Jorvan from the realities of coaching the team. “We lost our physio, two days before we got here,” he explains as his charges trot onto the field. “A bomb exploded in Baghdad and he was passing by. He was on his way to the travel agent to buy his ticket to come here.”
Talk to the players and it becomes clear that these macabre tales of cruelty and bad luck are common. Everyone has lost family and friends to the war. Keeper Sabri saw his brother-in-law killed a few weeks ago. Midfielder Haitham Kadim watched gunmen storm the pitch during a match in Baghdad and shoot his friend in the heart. Hawar Mullah Mohammad, a Kurd who plays up front, had to leave his home in Baghdad and sign for Al Ain, an oasis club in the middle of a desert in the UAE, to ensure his own safety. “I’d lost two members of my family,” he explains. “It’s difficult when you have no safety. Cars explode all the time. I had to pick up my two guns before going to practice, because I’d been threatened. You can buy guns anywhere in Baghdad. You need them. I don’t go back any more.”
The threat is twofold. On the one hand, players are targets for representing a unity that insurgents want to undermine. On the other, footballers are high-profile fodder for criminal gangs. A kidnapped national team player can be traded to his family for a high price, anywhere up to $6 million according to one player. Given the dangers, it’s no surprise that Iraq’s footballers are fleeing their homeland. On the team bus back to the hotel, striker Mohammed Nasser and midfielder Nashat Akram talk business. Both have negotiated their way out of Iraq: Mohammed to Apollon Limassol in Cyprus, Nashat to Al Shabab in Saudi Arabia. The key, they say, is getting an agent. “Most Iraqis don’t have one but it’s crucial because he can drop you in any country,” says Nashat.
While in Europe some agents are viewed as leeches, for Iraqis they are the only hope of escape – even if they make grandiose claims that won’t be fulfilled. “No one can see me play in Cyprus,” complains Mohammad. “So I sacked my agent. I have one at the moment, an Iranian, and he’s promised me a top-four club in Greece, England or Spain.”
Nashat, too, was promised a top-four club in Europe. What he got was a visit from Sunderland, who allegedly sent scouts to check him out. “Iraqis can play anywhere in the world, but it would be a dream to play for Roy Keane. I sent them my DVD and, Inshallah [God willing], I’ll hear something.”
Captain Younis Mahmoud is hot property, but the young striker, top-scorer in the star-filled Qatari league and scorer of 30 goals in 49 internationals, is unlikely to go to Europe soon. “Of course I want to play in England or France,” he says, “but my family is my priority and if I sign for a club in Europe, I can’t take my family. In Qatar, it’s no problem: they say ‘Bring everyone!’”
Not everyone is lucky enough to get out. Second-choice goalkeeper Ahmed Ali is one of four players who ply their trade in the Iraqi league with Al Zawraa in Baghdad. Ali’s day goes something like this:
“I wake up at 9am, I go to practice at 3pm, go home at 6pm, lock the door and don’t go out.” Suggest that he must have some security at games and the players around him howl with laughter. “I earn $100, a bodyguard gets $1000. I’m not David Beckham! My friend was shot dead during a game once, and they also dropped bombs, five of them, mortars I think, onto the field. It’s very dangerous.”
For those who remain in Iraq, there’s only one safe destination: the northern Kurdish region and its capital Erbil. Although in the West, we’re bombarded daily with images of destruction in Iraq, most of the violence is around Baghdad. The Kurdish region is booming. For a decade the Kurds have had a measure of self-rule with their regional government taking care of security. Property prices are rocketing, shopping malls are being thrown up and there’s little sectarian violence. When FourFourTwo visited Erbil in January, we discovered something that could have been out of a Pentagon wet dream. Sunni, Shia, Kurd and Christian living side my side, imbued with a self-confidence to look to the future. Strangers would shake our hands and thank “Mr Blair” while a twice-weekly flight on Austrian Airlines now runs between Erbil and Vienna. They even have their own tourism minister.
With Baghdad so unstable, the league has been scaled down and moved to the Kurdish areas. Which is good news for some. Erbil FC, a previously mediocre club, can now pick off Iraq’s best players and are dominating the local scene. They won the championship last season.
Assistant coach Rahim Hamed moved to Erbil when he received one death threat too many. “I got a letter that said we will kill your children and… make something… with my daughter. They fired at my house twice. So I moved to Erbil. I’m Shia. I don’t care, I’m Muslim and Iraqi. But now I sit in a small flat in a dirty area. It’s expensive. My rent is more than my brother’s rent in Holland.”
For all the hardship, he doesn’t have the idolised view of Saddam-era Iraq that many now have. Then again, he has good reason. Rahim was Iraq’s star striker in the 1980s and played at the 1986 World Cup sporting a large perm in honour of his hero, Kevin Keegan. He saw first-hand the brutality of the Hussein clan. Uday, Saddam’s bloodthirsty son, installed himself as head of the Olympic Committee and ruled it with his father’s uncompromising iron fist. If the team played badly, he’d threaten to chop off the striker’s legs. If training didn’t go well, he’d lock them in a cage. When the team failed to reach USA 94, he made them play with a concrete ball. Failure to qualify in 2002 resulted in the players having their feet whipped. Stories trickled out from the few sportsmen who managed to defect, but the true horror of Uday’s rule only came to light when the US stormed Iraq’s Olympic HQ in 2003. In the basement they found a rack and a medieval torture device used to rip open a man’s anus.
“You knew that if you didn’t play well, Uday would do something bad,” says Rahim, running his hands through his hair. “After one game he shaved everybody’s hair. That’s when I lost my perm.”
The Iraqi team bus pulls through Amman’s city limits, rocking to ear-splitting Arabic music. The players dance and shout in delight as a song by Iraqi singer Hussam Al Rassam starts up. The only thing you can hear over the sound of the music is the sound of laughter. Jorvan surveys the scene and gives a wry smile. “We have to give the Iraqi people a good mirror. Inside the national team there are no differences between Shia and Sunni. I was asked, how can you coach Iraq? I said ‘I don’t have ammo, no grenades, no M45, no axe.’ I’d like victory to bring peace to Iraq. They don’t have to pay me if I can help bring peace.”
The next day, Iraq beat Palestine 1-0 before putting Syria to the sword 3-0. The tournament ends with a game against arch-rivals Iran, who, spurred on by the boos of the 8000-strong Iraqi support, win 2-1. After the match, Nashat consoles his team-mates while Younis – topless and bearing a tattoo of Iraq on his left arm – harries the players to thank the fans. Mohammed Nasser is distraught, in tears, unable to speak. Finally he chokes out what he wants to say: “The Asian Cup, we still have the Asian Cup.”
Their opening game a week later is a shaky 1-1 draw with Thailand. Then Iraq pull off the shock of the tournament, beating Australia 3-1. Vietnam fall in the quarters, then South Korea in the semis, sparking celebration and tragedy back home.
On July 29, the Lions of Mesopotamia stride out into the Bukit Jalil National Stadium in Jakarta to face Saudi Arabia. Younis is the hero, heading the game’s only goal and sparking joyous scenes. Even the neutrals celebrate Iraq’s victory as if it were their own and the world’s press hail the achievement as one of sport’s great romantic stories.
Back home, the fear of attack isn’t enough to dampen the mood. Crowds celebrate from Erbil to Basra and bullets fly once more, this time with no reprisals. Increased security measures mean just seven people are killed by insurgents, but it would have been many more had police not averted an attempted suicide bombing in Baghdad. The risk of such activity means celebrations on the team’s return home are regrettably subdued, the PM’s reception held in the heavily-fortified green zone in the centre of Iraq, away from most civilians.
One person who isn’t here is the hero, Younis. “I wish I could go back to Baghdad to celebrate, but who will secure my life?” asks the captain.
Typically, every silver lining has a cloud. Jorvan quits after the match, despite pleas from fans, players and even the PM. “If my contract was for six months and not for two, they would have had to take me to the hospital for crazy people,” he explains.
Replacing the coach is the least of Iraq’s problems. This generation of footballers is likely to be the last to escape the chaos that grips their country. With a piecemeal league, thousands dying every month and thousands more fleeing, no one can see where the stars of the future will come from. “How can they come through? Where can they train?” asks Jorvan. “They will miss one or two generations because of the war. How can they develop sport in Iraq? Did you hear about the boys from taekwondo? It could happen with any player here.”
The fate of the “boys from taekwondo” illustrates the dangers any young sportsmen and women face in Iraq today. In 2006, 15 athletes aged between 18 and 26 were kidnapped on their way to a training camp in Jordan. A year later, and hours before the Iran-Iraq West Asian Championship game, their remains were found in a ditch near Ramadi. All had been shot in the head.
Related Articles
Champs and Chumps: Who impressed for the Olyroos?
Watch! Reno Piscopo lands stunner in Olyroos draw
