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Iraq coach praises players for winning
Asian Cup
30.7.2007
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July
30, 2007
JAKARTA, -- Jorvan Vieira said he always knew
there was something special about the Iraqi team he
had been asked to coach when he first met them at a
training camp in Jordan.
The Brazilian had been charged with one of the most
difficult challenges any coach had ever taken on: to
mould a team of Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish players
into a championship winning unit in the space of two
months.
Vieira had his initial doubts when only a handful of
players turned up to the first training session but
soon discovered a rare quality about his squad.
"We all know the problems in Iraq but I have learnt
that they are a fantastic people. They have an
extraordinary power," he told a news conference
after their 1-0 win over Saudi Arabia in Sunday's
final.
"We did not have much time so we had to work
quickly. We sometimes fought, we sometimes argued,
but we got the work done.
"It was very difficult but I am very proud of these
boys."
Vieira, who confirmed he was not seeking an
extension to his two month contract after the final,
knew his players had all been touched by the war and
it wasn't long until he too was affected.
"Our team physio, he was a good man. He was killed
in a bomb blast last month. He left behind a wife
and four kids," Vieira said.
The Iraqi players were able to mask their grief
throughout the tournament although there were
constant reminders of the sectarian violence at
home.
The entire squad wore black armbands during the
final in memory of the 50 people killed by suicide
bombers after Wednesday's semi-final win over South
Korea.
The Iraqi captain Younis Mahmoud, who was named best
player of the tournament after scoring the winning
goal in the final, said the team had been determined
to win after watching a television report from Iraq
with the mother of one of the victims.
"There was this mother who had seen her little boy
killed by a bomb after the match and she was saying
he had been sacrificed so that we would win the
match," Mahmoud said.
"We knew we had to win the match for her and so many
other people."
Kurds, Sunnis And Shiites Come Together For Asia
Cup Victory Celebration
Victory bullets rained on Iraq yesterday as millions
of people united as one to celebrate an historic
football triumph against Saudi Arabia in the final
of the Asian Cup.
Casting aside fears of car bombs, Shia, Sunni and
Kurds joined together to savour the 1-0 win in a
rare moment of happiness for a country usually
divided by sectarian strife.
Soldiers, policemen and civilians defied a strict
government order to leave their guns at home and
surged into the streets, firing celebratory shots
into the air from pistols and automatic machineguns.
“We are very happy. That is why we shoot. We don’t
care about the order,” said Ahmed, a 20-year-old
soldier in Baghdad, after blasting a couple of
rounds from his rifle. At least four people died in
the Iraqi capital alone from stray bullets falling
to the ground.
Chanting, singing and car horns also reverberated
with the gunfire across the country as men, women
and children from the southern port city of Basra to
Mosul in the north danced outside their houses and
sprayed each other with water.
“Iraq is victorious!” shouted men in Baghdad, while
waving Iraqi flags and T-shirts.
Images of the nail-biting game, played in Jakarta,
were beamed to television screens nationwide, where
people sat transfixed, gasping and shutting their
eyes whenever a shot passed wide of the goal.
A nationwide shortage of electricity forced many
families to congregate at a particular house or in a
local coffee shop to enjoy the match. An electricity
store in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad,
even dished out free power to families so they could
run their televisions.
Reuters | timesonline co.uk
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