More Tragedy for Iraqi Soccer

The tragedy of it is rivaled by only the absurdity of it:
Two teams representing the Shiite villages of Sinjar and Enana, near Hilla, which is south of Baghdad, played a close-fought match on Saturday, with Sinjar winning, 2-1. During celebrations, an off-duty police officer started firing his service pistol into the air but lost control [...]

Soccer’s Rise in Iraq

The revival of Iraq’s largest professional soccer league has been an incremental process. The league was inactive for two seasons following the U.S. invasion, and too many players to count–particularly on the Baghdad clubs–were killed or kidnapped. In late 2004, the league returned with a limited schedule, and now–finally–teams are playing more road games, and [...]

Iraq National Soccer Team No More … For Now

Now that Iraq can’t qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the national soccer team has been disbanded. As the AP notes, the dissolution occurs less than a year after Iraq’s stunning run to the Asian Cup championship. But there’s an upside: the team will be reassembled with a new coach and a [...]

Iraqi World Cup Dreams Dashed

Over the last year or so, the Iraqi national football team has reached impossible heights and narrowly avoided FIFA decertification. The latter possibility–that Iraq would be banned from competing for a berth in the 2010 World Cup field–angered the al-Maliki government and saddened the Iraqi people. As Najah Nasser, a Baghdad engineer, told the New [...]

The Grief of Mary Tillman

Let me begin this post by indulging in cliche: Pat Tillman, to me, is a genuine hero. As we’ve all heard so many times, he walked away from millions in the NFL to volunteer for perilous detail in Afghanistan, which, unlike the current morass in Iraq, was a just and necessary engagement. That’s a level [...]