If even a fraction of the stories tell the truth about how Iraqi football was run by Uday Hussein, Saddam’s elder son — the punishment for missing a penalty in an important match was said to be a sound whipping — they vividly illustrate the country’s ancillary sufferings, aside from the death and destruction of war.
And yet football survived regime change to become a rare unifying factor. A source of pride too; when the Iraq national team won the Asian Cup in 2007, congratulations flowed in from all parts of the world.
Yet behind the scenes the insidious effects of the Shia/Sunni divide have taken a toll. The Iraqi Football Association survived the Shia regime’s dissolution of all the country’s principal sporting bodies 18 months ago and Fifa, with relief, lifted an original ban, but feuding and infighting have returned to blight the game. Fifa must have felt it had little choice.
There can be no disagreement with the rule excluding national associations that are the playthings of political factions. But Fifa, which is rightly conscious of football’s capacity to bring factions together, might reconsider this as a special case.
Football is hardly short of “ambassadors’’ — figures who lend their charisma to good causes — and the idea could be adapted to form a working party on Iraq. The Iraqi people deserve a chance to maintain this oasis of communal pleasure.