Iraq's Journey to the World Cup: A Tale of Perseverance

Iraq’s road to the World Cup did not begin with a whistle. It began with a car engine turning over in the dark.

Players and staff crept out of scattered cities, heading for Baghdad by car or bus, some journeys stretching to eight hours. From there, the real ordeal started: roughly 15 hours on battered roads to Amman, Jordan, one of the few places in the region where flights still cut through the sky as war closed Iraq’s airspace.

“They had to travel from different cities to Baghdad by car or bus,” recalls René Meulensteen, assistant to Iraq’s coach, Graham Arnold. “Some of those journeys took up to eight hours. Then, from Baghdad they travelled roughly 15 hours on bumpy roads to Amman, in Jordan, where occasional flights were still operating. The other Asian-based players made their own way to Amman, so they could all travel together.”

From there, the journey became a marathon in the air. A private charter, arranged by Fifa, sat on the tarmac for nine long hours before finally lifting off. Eight hours to Lisbon. Two hours waiting. Then another 12 to Mexico.

All of that for one game. One shot at a first World Cup in 40 years.

A playoff like no other

By the time Iraq landed in Monterrey, the stakes had outgrown the white lines of the pitch. This was, as Meulensteen puts it, “the most important game in their lives”. Preparation had been shredded by logistics, but there was at least enough time to let the legs and heads clear before Bolivia awaited in the decisive playoff.

The setting helped. So did the support.

“All the remaining tickets were given to local Mexicans, so they were there in a big number, together with a large group of Iraqis based in the US,” Meulensteen says.

The stadium swelled with noise and colour, a borrowed home for a team that had crossed continents just to reach the kick-off. Iraq rode that wave and beat Bolivia 2-1, grabbing the final ticket to the World Cup.

In Mexico. Of all places.

“We told the players: ‘Let’s realise what kind of journey we’ve had to get here and perhaps the match is meant to be here, as Iraq’s previous World Cup participation was staged in Mexico.’”

The circle closed, 40 years on from their last appearance on the global stage, again in Mexican air and under Mexican floodlights.

A nation finally allowed to celebrate

Back in Baghdad, it was early morning. It did not matter.

“It was absolute madness in Baghdad, where it was early in the morning,” Meulensteen says. Videos flooded his phone, clips of streets erupting, fireworks, horns, strangers embracing. “The whole nation has been craving something to celebrate and this gives people a huge boost of energy and hope. You can really feel the sense of pride; there’s a genuine feelgood factor.”

This is not new ground for Iraqi football. The sport has repeatedly offered moments of unity in the darkest of times: fourth place at the 2004 Olympics after beating Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal, the 2007 Asian Cup triumph that briefly stitched together a country torn by civil war, and now another World Cup berth framed by the lingering scars of conflict.

“Iraq is still a country that is really feeling the aftereffects of the second Gulf war,” Meulensteen says. “You can see that in the cities. They are recovering, but logistically and organisationally you can’t compare it to Dubai or places in Saudi Arabia.”

Yet from that landscape has emerged a squad that sings its way to training.

“You should hear them on the bus to training and matches, singing and listening to music. It’s absolutely brilliant,” he says, a 62-year-old Dutchman completely at ease in the chaos and charm of his adopted footballing home.

Drawn with giants

Romance, however, will only carry a team so far at a World Cup. The draw has been brutal. Iraq will share a group with France, Senegal and Norway – a gauntlet of pedigree, power and depth.

“It’s like Manchester United against Grimsby,” Meulensteen says, leaning into an image that seems to place his side firmly in the role of plucky underdog. But he knows how that particular story ended last August. Grimsby won.

He has been here before, too. With Arnold and Australia at the last World Cup, he walked into a group containing France, Denmark and Tunisia with similar outside noise and similar expectations of an early flight home.

“We had France, Denmark and Tunisia in our group and weren’t given much chance of going through either,” he says. “But that’s where our biggest strength lies: the element of surprise.”

Australia beat Denmark, beat Tunisia and pushed Argentina hard in the last 16. The blueprint is clear: organisation, belief, and a willingness to punch up.

Iraq will need all of that. And more.

A squad of many roots

This Iraqi side carries a different kind of complexity. Some players were born in the country, others come from the diaspora, with Iraqi heritage but lives built elsewhere. Not all of them speak Arabic. The dressing room is a blend of languages and backgrounds, a modern national team in every sense.

Meulensteen helps bridge the gap. His intermediate Arabic, picked up in Qatar in the early 1990s, allows him to connect beyond tactics and diagrams. That move to the Gulf came with its own twist: in 1993, to live there with his girlfriend, he had to marry her. Cohabiting out of wedlock was not an option.

The detour to Qatar set him on a path that would eventually lead to Carrington, to Sir Alex Ferguson, and to working with one of the greatest players in history.

Building Cristiano

Meulensteen arrived at Manchester United eight years after Qatar, recommended by Dave Mackay and academy director Lee Kershaw. He started in the academy, then moved into specialist work with first-team players. After a brief spell as head coach at Brøndby, he returned to Old Trafford in 2007 with a more focused remit and began working closely with Ronaldo.

“I had several sessions with him on and off the pitch, using videos to show certain things. We focused on the key aspects of finishing, dividing the penalty area into zones to make him aware of his positioning, the type of crosses coming in and the best finish for each situation.”

The message was simple but sharp: less show, more substance.

He urged Ronaldo to channel his flair into efficiency. “I told him it’s all about being as unpredictable as possible, varying your game … Over the years, he mastered that perfectly.”

What impressed him most was not the stepovers or the free-kicks, but the relentless hunger behind them.

“What really stood out with Cristiano was his drive for perfection. And that’s still the case. At Carrington, we had this fenced cage with rebound boards. After training he would often go in there by himself for another 10 or 15 minutes. I also showed him exercises using those boards to handle the ball in different creative ways. He absolutely loved that.”

Their work that season did not stay on the training pitch. Meulensteen compiled everything – drills, clips, ideas – into a DVD, essentially a PowerPoint presentation with video, layered with messages about setting targets and the power of clear goals.

At the start of 2007-08, after Ronaldo had scored 23 goals the previous campaign, Meulensteen asked for a new number. Ronaldo said 30. “What about 40?” came the reply. Ronaldo agreed. He finished with 42, as United won both the Premier League and the Champions League.

Inside Ferguson’s blueprint

The summer of 2008 brought another promotion. Meulensteen became first-team coach, responsible for designing and leading training. Ferguson handed him the essence of Manchester United on three sheets of flipchart paper.

“It covered principles both defensively and in possession. But the final sheet, he said, was the most important, as it defined Manchester United the most. He said: ‘When we attack, I want to do so with pace, power, penetration and unpredictability. And I want you to apply those four things in every training session in some way.’ When you look back, during the period when we were at our best, you could see all those elements.”

Those four words – pace, power, penetration, unpredictability – now travel with him, from Old Trafford to Fulham, to the US, Israel, India, Australia and, ultimately, Iraq. They are as relevant to a team of global superstars as they are to a squad that has just spent 30 hours crossing the world for a playoff.

His journey since leaving United in 2013 has been varied, but each stop has added something to his coaching armoury, especially around the mental side of the game.

“If they experience fear, I ask them to give it a shape. What exactly is that fear? It could be the fear of the consequences of not winning a match. You don’t always have control over everything that comes into your head, like what you see and what you hear. But I encourage them to focus on what they want, their desires – like playing well, scoring a goal or reaching the World Cup.”

He prefers to talk about “adding” to a player’s game rather than changing it, a subtle shift in language that keeps confidence intact. Words matter. Ferguson drilled that into him.

“He always said the two most important coaching words are: well done,” Meulensteen says. Towards the end of sessions at Carrington, Ferguson would often wander past, tap him on the shoulder and offer exactly that.

Tea, trivia and a new chapter

The bond between the two men endures. They still meet for tea, long conversations that drift from football to politics, history, films.

“He is a great storyteller and has very broad interests. He reads a lot and knows a great deal about politics and history. He is absolutely fascinated by the American civil war; he knows so much about it. But also about movies, actors and actresses, you name it. He was incredibly well rounded.

“At United, when we were on the bus or train to away games, we would often play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on my iPad. The number of times we made it to the end is unbelievable. He knew things I would have never known.”

Those memories still glow. “Beautiful,” is how Meulensteen describes that period of his life at United.

Now he stands at the start of something very different, but no less compelling: a World Cup with Iraq, a team stitched together from homegrown talent and far-flung heritage, from cities still healing and families scattered.

They will walk into a group with France, Senegal and Norway as outsiders. They will carry the weight of a nation that has waited four decades for this stage. They will face teams with deeper resources, smoother preparations and shorter journeys.

But they have already proved they can handle a rough road.

The question now is not whether Iraq belong at this World Cup. They have earned that. The question is how far this improbable, hard-travelled story can run once the ball starts rolling.