Here's a question for you: What is the greatest ever underdog achievement in the history of
football? There are a few contenders. West Germany winning the 1954 World Cup, despite
having an amateur league and just nine years after the destruction of World War 2?
How about Iceland, with a population the size of Coventry, beating England to reach the
quarter finals of the 2016 European Championship, and later becoming the smallest nation to
ever reach a World Cup finals?
Or perhaps you have a soft spot for Leicester City becoming Premier League champions, something
that has become all the more poignant since the death last year of the club's Thai owner
in a helicopter crash outside the ground.
These all have their merits, but there is one achievement that stands above all of them.
The Iraq national team winning the 2007 Asian Cup. Their story had everything. Players in
exile. A country destroyed by war, death threats, an enigmatic coach drafted in at the last
minute and a talismanic striker whose goal brought a fractured nation briefly back to
together.
Iraq's triumph at the Asian Cup in 2007 didn't come out of nowhere. During the mid 1980s
Iraq had arguably been the Middle East's best team. They qualified for the World Cup in
1986. But football in the 1980s and 1990s in Iraq were controlled by one man: Uday,
the bloodthirsty sadistic son of the country's dictator Saddam Hussein. Uday had a violent
reputation that was cemented in 1988 when he drunkenly murdered Saddam's personal valet
at a party held in honour of the wife of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. After a brief
period of punishment, it was clear that, even as his eldest son, Uday would never be allowed
to rule Iraq. Instead Uday built a fiefdom in Iraqi sport, as the president of both the
Iraqi national olympic committee and the country's football association. He had already grown
a taste for football after starting a new club called Al Rasheed and using every lever
at his disposal to make sure it dominated the Iraqi league by forcing teams to hand
over their best players under threat of imprisonment or worst.
It was here that he began to torture players, ordering beatings and head shavings if a player
didn't perform well, which became increasingly hard to do given that effects of the Iran-Iraq
war, a brutal conflict that would take a million lives, and later the first Gulf War in 1990
and the international sanctions and isolation that followed. Uday's answer was to use a
more aggressive form of motivation, Over the years several players have defected to tell
the story of how Iraq's national team players were tortured. There was the famous example
of the time he made the entire squad play football with a concrete ball as punishment
for not qualifying for the 1994 World Cup finals. Or the time when, after going out
in the group stage at the 2000 Asian Cup, three players Uday blamed for the embarrassment
were beaten in a torture chamber located underneath the Iraqi Olympic HQ. Prison, beatings, being
dumped in tanks of raw sewage: being a footballer in Iraq was a dangerous business.
The second Gulf War eventually brought about Uday's demise when he was killed in a shoot
out with US forces. Coalition forces eventually found Uday's torture chamber underneath Iraq's
Olympic HQ, which included a bed frame connected to the main electric power supply, a sarcophagus
with long nails on the inside, and a medieval device used to rip open a person's anus. But
Iraq had a new problem. The hated Saddam and his sons were gone but chaos was left in its
wake and a vicious sectarian civil war broke out. Iraq managed to send a team to the 2004
Olympic Games in Greece, even though German journeyman coach Bernd Stange quite before
the tournament. Stange would explain that his driver was executed in the run up to the
tournament and he feared for his life. But at the tournament a new generation of players
he had blooded in qualification excelled. Including Hawar Mullah Mohamed, a Kurdish
attacking midfielder and Nashat Akram, the midfield engine of the team. A young striker
called Younis Mahmoud emerged, who scored in a 4-2 victory over a Portugal side that
included Cristiano Ronaldo. Iraq made the semi finals, losing to Paraguay and finishing
fourth. But the Olympic experience set the scene for perhaps Iraq's greatest triumph.
By 2007 as many as 100 people were being killed everyday in Baghdad. Unsurprisingly, no home
international matches could take place in Baghdad so Iraq's home games were played in
the UAE. Despite losing their opening game 2-0 to Singapore, Iraq roared back to win
their group and qualify for the Asian Cup. But their preparations were in disarray. Aside
from the threats from various sectarian militia groups who despised the fact that the Iraqi
national team contained Shia, Sunni and Kurd working together, criminal gangs were trying
to extort the players by threatening them and their families. Every player had to leave
the country, with each having a story about the moment they decided they had to leave.
Hawar Mullah Mohamed told a story of how he would have to turn up to training with a machine
gun. Noor Sabri, the goalkeeper, heard that his brother in law had been killed shortly
before the tournament. Haitham Kadhim saw a teammate killed during a match.
So, as the team gathered in Amman, the capital of Jordan, and now home to a million Iraqi
refugees, little was expected of them. They were coach-less and traumatised. Enter Jorvan
Vieira, a Brazilian coach who had converted to Islam and had enjoyed some success coaching
in North Africa. “These boys, I have to deal with many, many problems: social, political,
internal. Most of these players don’t know where they are. Every minute the situation
changes,” he said.
Vieira had certainly walked into the lions den. In the run up to the tournament he had
lost a physio who had been killed in a suicide bombing. News had also filtered through that
another national team, the Iraqi youth taekwondo team, hadn't made it to Amman. They had all
been executed and buried in shallow graves near to the Jordanian border. But in a short
period of time Vieira managed to bring some calm and unity to the dressing room before
leaving for the tournament being hosted in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Iraq, of course, flew economy class.
Iraq's tournament began slowly with Younis Mahmoud, now the undisputed figurehead upfront,
salvaging a 1-1 draw against Thailand. But next, Iraq pulled off the shock of the tournament,
a 3-1 victory against Australia. In the quarter finals Younis Mahmoud scored twice as they
beat Vietnam setting up a quarter final against South Korea. As the team progressed, thousands
upon thousands of Iraqis would take to the streets to celebrate, in increasing numbers,
flying the Iraqi flag openly on the streets for the first time in years. The semi final
was no different. The game finished 0–0 and went to penalties, with Noor Sabri saving
the final kick. But, as the team celebrated, and Baghdad celebrated too, a suicide bomber
quietly approached an ice cream parlour full of celebrating fans in the capital, destroying
himself and 30 football fans with him. That night twenty more fans were killed across
the city in suicide attacks, as were five more, accidentally, due to people firing their
guns victoriously in the air, and the bullets falling back to earth. The Iraqi team, ecstatic
in the aftermath of triumph, were shattered by the news that their victory had indirectly
led to the deaths of dozens of their compatriots. Nashat Akram, Younis Mahmoud and Jorvan Vieira
would later explain how the team sat in silence in the dressing room watching the carnage
on TV. The team held a meeting to discuss pulling out of the tournament. But, on TV,
they watched as a bereaved mother was interviewed. Her young son, Haider, had been murdered in
the attack. Umm Haider, mother of Haider, as she would become known, begged the team
to continue in memory of him vowing not to bury him until they won the title.
And they did.
In an emotional final Iraq took on regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia. And it was, of course,
Younis Mahmoud that scored the winning goal in a tight 1-0 victory, clinching Iraq their
first and only Asian Cup title. Despite the risk and the bloodshed of the previous weeks,
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were back on the streets to celebrate.
The team would return to Baghdad, to be met up the prime minister and Umm Haider. Younis
Mahmoud used the platform to criticise the US occupation. “I want America to go out.
Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn't
invade Iraq and, hopefully, it will be over soon.” Mahmoud would be nominated for FIFA's
World Player of the Year award and move to Qatar after being denied a dream move to Europe
due to visa restrictions on his family. “Of course, I want to play in England. 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!'” he said.
Midfielder Nashat Akram went a step further when he was actually signed by Sven-Göran
Eriksson's Manchester City side. But the British government refused to issue a work permit.
Despite winning the Asian Cup, and despite Britain's culpability in Iraq's destruction,
the British government decided that Iraq wasn't ranked high enough by FIFA to warrant a work
permit. He would later move to the Netherlands. Hawar Mullah Mohammed also made it to Europe,
signing for Anorthosis Famagusta. In 2008 he became the first Iraqi to score in the
Champions League when Anorthosis Famagusta beat Panathinaikos 3-1. And Jorvan Vieira?
He would quit shortly after the tournament, saying that the job was impossible and was
making him crazy.
After July 2007, US military statistics revealed that the number of civilian deaths dramatically
decreased, from 26,000 to just over 10,000 in 2008. The US military surge was partially
responsible. But there was also no doubt that the Lions of Mesopotamia – even if it was
only briefly – reminded a fractured country that they were greater than the sum of their
parts.