Football Final Brings Iraq's Warring Factions Onside

The bombs didn't stop and the gunfire wasn't celebratory. But nothing was going to distract millions of football-mad Iraqis from the on-field fortunes of the Lions of Mesopotamia yesterday as they battled to bring back the soccer gold medal from the Asian Games to their strife-torn homeland.

Even a first-half ticker-tape message on state television reminding viewers to go and pray went largely unheeded.

Bill Shankly's declaration that football was more important than life and death had never seemed more fitting.

In eight games in just over two weeks, Iraq's national football team had defied the odds to reach the final against the hosts Qatar. The onward march of the team had provided rare respite from the daily kidnappings, death squads and suicide bombs. With Shia, Kurds, Sunni and Turkomen in the team, the young Lions, average age 21, carried on their shoulders the hopes of a country teetering on the brink of civil war.

There had been extraordinary scenes earlier in the week, after they had knocked out favourites South Korea 1-0 in the semi-final. Jubilant crowds briefly regained Baghdad's streets from the gunmen, dancing to patriotic songs, waving the flag, and firing shots into the air.

"These victories give us a deep sense of pride and unity," said Omar Riadh, a student at Baghdad university as he celebrated on the central Saddoun street. "We deserve as many happy moments as we can get. The team is a blow against the terrorists who want to destroy our country."

Even the normally divisive Sunni and Shia media had united to rejoice the team's success. "Iraq's heroes close to gold after great victory over Korea," read a headline in Al Sabah newspaper, controlled by the Shia-led government, while the Sunni-owned Al Mashriq daily proclaimed: "Our heroes in competition for gold medal."

Yesterday as the national coach Yehya Mehal led his players from the tunnel for the final in Doha's Al Sadd stadium, the streets of Baghdad emptied. Fans gathered in friend's houses, or in coffee shops, anywhere there was electricity and a television. At checkpoints and neighbourhood barricades across the city, police and local militias huddled in the dark around their portable radios. In the Amil district of western Baghdad, 11 friends had clubbed together to rent a generator for a day so they could watch the match.

"Look at us here in this room," said Azad Abdul Rahman, a Kurd from Kirkuk. "We are Kurds, Arabs, Shia and Sunni. We are all friends and all support the national team together."

A pre-match pep talk from President Jalal Talabani via mobile phone was not enough to prevent a 1-0 defeat in the final for a clearly exhausted Iraq side. He said "You are the young lions of Iraq. In these sad times, whatever today's result you have bought a smile to every Iraqi house from Kurdistan to Basra."