Iraqi rookies looking to impress (Feature)

By DB Peters Nov 18, 2008, 4:04 GMT

Baghdad - One of the few positive stories coming out of war- torn Iraq in recent years has been the success of their national football teams.

Since 2003, when the country sent an under-23 team to the Asian Cup and managed to qualify for the quarter-finals, Iraqi teams have been grabbing their fair share of international headlines.

In 2004, the international media followed their Cinderella story at the Olympic Games in Athens as the same under-23 team reached the semi-finals of the Olympic football tournament and finished fourth.

But if Iraqi fans thought it could get no better, they were in for a pleasant surprise as Iraq won the silver medal in the football tournament at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha.

A year later coach Jorvan Vieira sensationally guided the team to their first-ever Asian Cup title.

Although born in Brazil to a Portuguese father and a Brazilian mother, Vieira currently holds four nationalities: Brazilian, Portuguese, Moroccan and Iraqi, which he was given after winning the Asian Cup.

After beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the final, Vieira, who is married to a Moroccan and is a practising Muslim, announced that he would not renew his contract with the Iraqis, citing administrative problems as the reason.

It was then announced that he had signed a contract with Iranian club Mes Kerman FC, but after that deal fell through he joined Sepahan FC.

Less than six months into the contract he was fired and returned to the Iraqi national team. Shortly before he returned to Iraq the country's football federation had temporarily been suspended by football's controlling body FIFA after the Iraqi government disbanded the national sports federations.

The government however reacted promptly and reversed their decision, allowing them to return to the FIFA fold just a few days after having been suspended.

Vieira's first real test since rejoining will be the 2009 Confederations Cup, where the players with whom he won the Asian Cup are expected to form the nucleus of the squad.

The team is led by captain Younis Mahmoud, who scored the only goal of the match in the Asian Cup last year and was named the Player of the Tournament.

The 25-year-old, who plays for Qatari club Al-Arabi, is just as much a role model for his teammates as he is off the field and is well known throughout the country for his charitable work.

Last year, after earning a prize of 100,000 dollars for winning the top scorer award in the Qatar league, he donated the money to build a mosque in his home town in Kirkuk.

He also donated the 10,000 dollars he won for another award from an Italian newspaper to a charity.

The other star in the side is winger Hawar Mulla Mohammed Taher, whose younger brother Halgurd Mulla Mohammed also features for the national team.

In August of this year, Hawar signed a contract with Cypriot club Famagusta Anorthosis, which not only sensationally qualified for the group stage of the Champions League, but are also well-placed to advance to the knock-out stages.

The 27-year-old made history when he became the first Iraqi player to feature in the Champions League when he came on during his club's first game and has played in all others since then, scoring once in Famagusta's victory against Panathinaikos.

Hawar and his teammates will be eagerly watching the draw for the Confederations Cup in Johannesburg on November 22 as it could well result in an intriguing clash between Iraq and the United States.

There is also the issue of the hidden animosity between Kurds and Iraqis as Hawar and several of his teammates are Kurdish.