Give the Iraqis the Game of Soccer Back! / Gebt den Irakern den Fußball zurück!

(Deutsche Übersetzung am Schluß des Beitrags)

An important tip for our American friends: Give the Iraqis the game of soccer back!

Bernd Stange, the (German) coach of the Iraqi national soccer team, in an interview with the German daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung":

I don’t want to elevate my soccer to a level that it doesn’t belong on. But it is a very important part of Iraqi life. Earlier the professional matches were sold out with 55,000 fans. For one year soccer has been taken away from the Iraqis. If you took football or baseball away from the Americans for a year they’d also be missing something. Had the Americans recognized the meaning of soccer they would have given us a field to practice on long ago.

They could have transported the unwanted turf from the women’s World Cup matches that they threw or gave away to Baghdad. It must be possible to take along a few rolls of turf if you can bring tanks weighing tons to Baghdad. That would have been possible with a little bit of heart and caring. I can only advise the Americans that they must pay attention to such things if they want to reach the hearts of the people in Iraq. In so doing they can win much more than they could with their military machinery.

Translation by Ray D..

Deutsche Übersetzung

Ein wichtiger Hinweis für unsere amerikanischen Freunde: gebt den Irakern das Fußballspiel zurück!

Bernd Stange, the (German) coach of the Iraqi national soccer team, in an interview with the German daily "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung":

Ich will meinen Fußball nicht an eine Stelle befördern, wo er nicht hingehört. Aber er ist ein sehr wichtiger Teil des irakischen Lebens. Früher waren die Punktspiele mit 55000 Zuschauern ausverkauft. Man nimmt den Irakern seit einem Jahr den Fußball weg. Wenn man den Amerikanern ein Jahr Football und Basketball wegnehmen würde, fehlte ihnen auch etwas. Wenn die Amerikaner die Bedeutung des Fußballs erkannt hätten, hätten sie uns längst einen Rasenplatz für das Training gegeben.

Sie hätten den Rasen, den sie nach der Frauen-Weltmeisterschaft serienweise verschenkt und weggeworfen haben, weil ihn niemand mehr wollte, nach Bagdad transportiert. Es muß doch einfach möglich sein, wenn man tonnenschwere Panzer nach Bagdad bringt, auch ein paar Rollen Rasen mitzunehmen. Das wäre mit ein klein wenig Engagement und Herz möglich gewesen. Ich kann den Amerikanern nur raten, daß sie auf solche Dinge achten müssen, wenn sie die Herzen der Menschen im Irak erreichen wollen. Sie könnten damit viel mehr gewinnen als mit der Militärmaschinerie.

Comments

[Bill Archer]

While I sympathize with Coach Strange, and couldn't agree more that sports can serve an important role as a symbol in the process and progress of normalization, from the first moents of the war he has lashed out at US policy while remaining astonishingly blind to the conditions under which the program was run prior to the first M1A1A appearing on the horizon.

His outrage a few months ago about the Iraqi National stadium being used as a tank park has never been matched by any sort of acknowledgement that the players who performed there were subjected to Uday Hussein's wrath when they failed to live up to his expectations. Indeed, the former team Captain, who played under Herr Strange, has reported being brutally whipped and then tossed into a vat of human excrement to guarantee that the wounds would become infected, all because his play had displeased Saddam's Lion Cub.

Strange has remained, pardon the expression, strangely silent on all of this. Iraq's national team players have all expressed great joy at being able to play without fear of punishment for failure, and have begun making plans to participate in International tournaments in 2004.

Meanwhile, Herr Strange, who headed a soccer program whose headquarters building, which housed his own office, had a torture chamber and prison cells in the basement, can do no better than complain about the US not ripping up the pitch at the new Home Depot Center in LA (where the Women's World Cup final was held, and where this "leftover sod" must apparently be, which will be a surprise to the LA Galaxy of Major League Soccer) and airlifting it to Baghdad.

Bernd Strange needs to get just a little grip on reality.

Bill Archer