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Thursday, August 12

Iraqi soccer team finds Olympic sanctuary from war

PATRAS, Greece - It was 10:23 p.m. when unmitigated joy was found a long way from Baghdad, bloody Baghdad, when the final whistle blew and the young men from Iraq could do so much more than sing and dance. They could forget. That was the greatest gift of a forever Olympic soccer match - yes, the Iraqis could forget all night long.

If all the Americans wanted in Lake Placid was a memory frozen in time, all the Iraqis wanted in Patras was a moment. A temporary reprieve. A chance for 700 countrymen in the Summer Games stands, and millions back home, to make a hiding place out of a victory over a Portugal team thought to be powerful enough to challenge for the gold.

``I think now everybody in Iraq forgets the problem,'' said the Iraqi coach, Adnan Hamad.

The problem. Who had time for the problem under the faraway Olympic lights, where jubilant Iraqi fans could joke about the warnings they'd send to the American troops fighting a war in their charred and battered homeland?

``My people are going to shoot guns in Baghdad and everywhere else in my country tonight,'' said Shorsh Abdullah, a 24-year-old Iraqi living in Patras. ``Tell the Americans not to shoot back. My people are only celebrating our victory. We are free from Saddam, free to celebrate.''

With this 4-2 triumph over Portugal complete, the Iraqi players held hands as one and skipped in a line toward a frenzied crowd choked with Iraqi flags, Iraqi shirts and Iraqi tears. In their native tongue, the fans chanted, ``By our souls and blood, we are giving life to you, Iraq.''

Zana Mukiryani, a 22-year-old fan from Baghdad, stood among those chanting fans. He explained that the words had changed over the last two years. ``We used to say, `We are giving life to you, Saddam,' `` Mukiryani said.Earlier, 24-year-old countryman Maher Hedou had said a victory would ``be like peace, maybe. For our country, maybe it's the first hint for us to have it good after all the years of the Saddam regime and the terrorists.''

The bulletins of death and dying are still flying out of Iraq with rocket-propelled force. The latest headline told of a major U.S. offensive against the Najaf militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr.

With American tanks raging across their homeland and around their holy shrines, the Iraqi soccer players used this remarkable Olympic experience as a sanctuary from the everyday horrors of war. They needed the Australian Air Force to secretly airlift them out of Baghdad, this so old regime loyalists wouldn't blow them out of the sky.

``We have many, many difficulties,'' Hamad said. The coach spoke of pre-Olympic practices being thwarted by barriers, bullets and tanks. When the Iraqis were still being coached by the German, Bernd Stange, they were bombed right out of their stadium. Stange was driven right out of his job by death threats and the shooting of his driver.

``With the situation in Iraq,'' Hamad said, ``we are very worried now for our families. Four players just had more bad news from Baghdad. ... There's still fighting versus the American forces. It's a difficult situation for our players, but I think it made them more confident and more ...''

Speaking in English, Hamad couldn't come up with the right word. More ``inspired'' might've worked.

``I think we tried to make people happy,'' the Iraqi coach said.

The Iraqis know they will return to devastated communities and fractured families, but they also know they will not return to Uday Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's two sons killed by U.S. forces in a six-hour battle in Mosul.

Uday didn't know much about headers and corner kicks, but he knew plenty about fear and loathing. As head of Iraq's National Olympic Committee, he was his country's leading scholar in the fields of intimidation and pain. In defeat, Uday was a consistent leader. He was forever making sadism his game of the week.

Electric prods were among Uday's weapons of choice. He reportedly made his soccer players kick spiked-up concrete balls, and reportedly ordered tortured athletes with fresh wounds to be dumped in pits of raw sewage, actions that inspired the IOC to temporarily suspend Iraq's membership.

How might Uday have responded after Iraq's breathless show of skill, nerve and grace? The players were too busy celebrating to care. They weren't supposed to be participating in these Games. They only qualified after beating Saudi Arabia in Jordan (the war made Iraq too perilous a site), and after watching a minor sports miracle unfold: the Iraqis needed a scoreless tie out of Kuwait and Oman, and a scoreless tie Kuwait and Oman gave them.

``It's a wonderful achievement,'' said Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA, ``for the Iraqis to be out of their catastrophe.''

Even an on-field catastrophe couldn't stop the Iraqis here. Haidar Jabar kicked the ball into his own net to give Portugal an early 1-0 lead and to summon dreadful, imagine-what-Uday-would've-done images. The goaltender, Nour Sabri, responded by patting Jabar on the head.

Emad Mohammed would tie the score on a breakaway and kick off a wild celebration by running about the field and waving off teammates who wanted to smother him. A fan in a black shirt ran onto the field and jumped into the waiting arms of Sabri, who hugged the fan tight while a Greek security officer tried in vain to separate them.

The Portuguese kept hitting posts and crossbars, announcing to all that this would not be their night. The Iraqis kept waving their flags and chanting their chants. In the end, Younis Mahmoud was the fitting hero.

He was wearing a huge bandage across his forehead, and bleeding like Chuck Wepner, when he executed a perfect give-and-go with Mohammed in the second half to make it 3-2, Iraq. Mahmoud had taken an elbow from Cristiano Renaldo, a Portuguese star who plays for high and mighty Manchester United and who was named after an American president, Ronald Reagan.

``We showed so much courage,'' said Abdullah, the fan. ``This is a night all Iraqis will remember.''

A night to remember because it gave them a reason to forget.

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