Cruelbreed
07-17-2009, 01:44 PM
Iraqis Cheer for a Team That Again Is at Home
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
BAGHDAD — The score did not matter so much — well, it mattered some. More important was that Iraq’s itinerant national soccer team, displaced for years by war, finally returned to Baghdad on Monday night to play a home match at home.
In a dusty summer swelter, tens of thousands of Iraqis poured into Baghdad’s shabby Shaab Stadium and for the first time since 2002 filled it with a cacophony of clapping, clanging, chanting and cheering for the one thing that unifies Iraq more than any other.
“Iraq! Iraq!” they chanted hours before the match, the stadium filled past capacity and genuinely festive like nothing Baghdad had experienced in years.
A roar went up when the national team jogged out, formed a circle at midfield and, as one, kissed the ground. It became deafening when Iraq’s Kurdish hero, Hawar Mulla Mohammed, scored the team’s first goal 27 minutes into the match, the second of two friendly contests against a Palestinian team, from another beleaguered place.
It never really let up as Iraq scored three more goals, cruising to a 4-0 victory. The first match was played on Friday night in Irbil, in the relative security of Kurdish northern Iraq, with Iraq winning by a similarly lopsided score, 3-0. Iraq’s new coach, Nadhim Shakir, described the games as milestones, comparing the team’s return home to an experience thousands of Iraqis have endured since the American invasion in 2003.
“We are like someone who’s been displaced from his house,” he said before the match on Monday. “Now, at last, he is going back.”
Like many of Iraq’s recent milestones — including the withdrawal of American combat forces from the cities 13 days ago — the match was colored by the realities of a capital that is more secure, but far from safe.
Armored vehicles blocked the roads leading to Al Shaab (or the People’s) Stadium, closing them to traffic for miles around. Hundreds of police and security officers circled the field, jostling with young fans trying to scramble closer, and largely losing the effort to maintain control at halftime. At practice on Sunday a car bomb that exploded a mile away, killing four people at a Christian church, reverberated through the stadium.
“Fireworks,” Mehdi al-Kerkhi, a cheerleader who has been a familiar fixture on the sidelines of Iraq’s national teams for four decades, said dismissively. Mr. Shakir, who played on the national team in the 1980s during Iraq’s war with Iran, said violence and international isolation had long been a grim backdrop for the national pastime.
“It was always war,” he said. “Thank God, at last, we are more secure.”
In the end on Monday there was little significant violence before or after the match.
It may be a cliché that sports is the language of peace and of unity, but the national team had given a soccer-crazed nation something to root for in its darkest days, although the danger forced its players to live and play outside Iraq, even for “home” games.
The team finished fourth in the Athens Olympics in 2004 and won an improbable upset over Saudi Arabia in the 2007 Asian Cup, prompting horn-honking, flag-waving, rifle-firing jubilation in the streets.
Even now FIFA, the international soccer governing body, is wary of allowing Iraq to play at home, but it is relenting some in recognition of the improved security. Iraq has another match scheduled in Baghdad against Tanzania on Aug. 12, although a match against New Zealand on Sept. 5 will be played in Amman, Jordan.
Mr. Kerkhi said the real heroes of the match were the Palestinians, who had agreed to come to Iraq. “All of the other Arab teams don’t play here because they are afraid,” he said. “Only they had the guts.”
A Palestinian midfielder, Assad Abdul-Karim, said, “The Iraqis are our brothers, and we wanted to break their isolation.”
In a sign that politics infects even soccer, the crowd on Monday night occasionally broke into chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
The national team’s fortune has waned lately. It failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and had a disappointing run in the Confederations Cup in South Africa last month, failing to score a goal in three games: a loss and two draws. Even so, the players said the team, like the country, exhausted by war, had turned a corner, which might be more important than the results on the field.
“We’re tired of traveling,” said the goalkeeper, Mohammed Gasad. “Now we have our own country.”
Sam Dagher and Amir A. Al-Obeidi contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/middleeast/14soccer.html?ref=middleeast
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
BAGHDAD — The score did not matter so much — well, it mattered some. More important was that Iraq’s itinerant national soccer team, displaced for years by war, finally returned to Baghdad on Monday night to play a home match at home.
In a dusty summer swelter, tens of thousands of Iraqis poured into Baghdad’s shabby Shaab Stadium and for the first time since 2002 filled it with a cacophony of clapping, clanging, chanting and cheering for the one thing that unifies Iraq more than any other.
“Iraq! Iraq!” they chanted hours before the match, the stadium filled past capacity and genuinely festive like nothing Baghdad had experienced in years.
A roar went up when the national team jogged out, formed a circle at midfield and, as one, kissed the ground. It became deafening when Iraq’s Kurdish hero, Hawar Mulla Mohammed, scored the team’s first goal 27 minutes into the match, the second of two friendly contests against a Palestinian team, from another beleaguered place.
It never really let up as Iraq scored three more goals, cruising to a 4-0 victory. The first match was played on Friday night in Irbil, in the relative security of Kurdish northern Iraq, with Iraq winning by a similarly lopsided score, 3-0. Iraq’s new coach, Nadhim Shakir, described the games as milestones, comparing the team’s return home to an experience thousands of Iraqis have endured since the American invasion in 2003.
“We are like someone who’s been displaced from his house,” he said before the match on Monday. “Now, at last, he is going back.”
Like many of Iraq’s recent milestones — including the withdrawal of American combat forces from the cities 13 days ago — the match was colored by the realities of a capital that is more secure, but far from safe.
Armored vehicles blocked the roads leading to Al Shaab (or the People’s) Stadium, closing them to traffic for miles around. Hundreds of police and security officers circled the field, jostling with young fans trying to scramble closer, and largely losing the effort to maintain control at halftime. At practice on Sunday a car bomb that exploded a mile away, killing four people at a Christian church, reverberated through the stadium.
“Fireworks,” Mehdi al-Kerkhi, a cheerleader who has been a familiar fixture on the sidelines of Iraq’s national teams for four decades, said dismissively. Mr. Shakir, who played on the national team in the 1980s during Iraq’s war with Iran, said violence and international isolation had long been a grim backdrop for the national pastime.
“It was always war,” he said. “Thank God, at last, we are more secure.”
In the end on Monday there was little significant violence before or after the match.
It may be a cliché that sports is the language of peace and of unity, but the national team had given a soccer-crazed nation something to root for in its darkest days, although the danger forced its players to live and play outside Iraq, even for “home” games.
The team finished fourth in the Athens Olympics in 2004 and won an improbable upset over Saudi Arabia in the 2007 Asian Cup, prompting horn-honking, flag-waving, rifle-firing jubilation in the streets.
Even now FIFA, the international soccer governing body, is wary of allowing Iraq to play at home, but it is relenting some in recognition of the improved security. Iraq has another match scheduled in Baghdad against Tanzania on Aug. 12, although a match against New Zealand on Sept. 5 will be played in Amman, Jordan.
Mr. Kerkhi said the real heroes of the match were the Palestinians, who had agreed to come to Iraq. “All of the other Arab teams don’t play here because they are afraid,” he said. “Only they had the guts.”
A Palestinian midfielder, Assad Abdul-Karim, said, “The Iraqis are our brothers, and we wanted to break their isolation.”
In a sign that politics infects even soccer, the crowd on Monday night occasionally broke into chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
The national team’s fortune has waned lately. It failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and had a disappointing run in the Confederations Cup in South Africa last month, failing to score a goal in three games: a loss and two draws. Even so, the players said the team, like the country, exhausted by war, had turned a corner, which might be more important than the results on the field.
“We’re tired of traveling,” said the goalkeeper, Mohammed Gasad. “Now we have our own country.”
Sam Dagher and Amir A. Al-Obeidi contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/world/middleeast/14soccer.html?ref=middleeast