Iraq's Journey to the World Cup: A Tale of Resilience
The road to Mexico began on a bus.
Not a luxury team coach with reclining seats and Wi‑Fi, but battered vehicles crawling across Iraq in the dark, players and staff bumping along for up to eight hours just to reach Baghdad. From there, the journey to a World Cup playoff became an endurance test that no other qualifier had to face.
Fifteen more hours on rough roads to Amman. Border checks. Fatigue. A country at war and airspace shut, forcing footballers to travel like fugitives just to keep a dream alive.
Only in Jordan did the journey start to resemble that of a modern national team. The Asian-based players converged on Amman, finally together. Fifa had laid on a private charter, but the ordeal refused to end quietly. A nine-hour delay, then an eight-hour flight to Lisbon, a two-hour stopover, and another 12 hours in the air to Mexico.
By the time Iraq landed in Monterrey, they had crossed continents and conflict zones for what René Meulensteen, assistant to head coach Graham Arnold, calls “the most important game in their lives”. It was, in every sense, a World Cup decider earned the hard way.
A nation’s release in Monterrey
The playoff against Bolivia, staged in the Mexican city that once hosted the world’s elite in 1986, carried a strange symmetry. Iraq’s only previous World Cup appearance had been in Mexico. Now, 40 years on, they stood one match away from returning, again on Mexican soil.
The players were reminded of that history. After everything they had endured just to get there, the staff framed the setting as destiny rather than coincidence. This, they were told, was where the circle might close.
The stands helped. With tickets handed to local Mexicans and a sizeable Iraqi diaspora travelling up from the United States, the stadium turned into an unlikely pocket of Baghdad. Noise, colour, flags. A team that had come through war zones walked out to warmth.
They did not waste it. Iraq beat Bolivia 2-1 and claimed the final ticket to the World Cup. For the players, it was exhaustion mixed with elation. For those back home, it was something else entirely.
In Baghdad, it was early morning when the final whistle blew. The city erupted. Streets filled. Fireworks, car horns, people hanging out of windows. Meulensteen watched the scenes later on video: “absolute madness,” he calls it. A country battered by decades of conflict had finally found a reason to pour into the streets in joy, not protest or grief.
The impact went beyond football. Iraqis, he says, have been “craving something to celebrate”. This team, with its improbable qualification, has given them a surge of energy and a visible sense of pride. You can feel the release in every clip from that night.
Football against the backdrop of war
Iraqi football has long existed in the shadow of conflict. The 1986 World Cup, the fourth-place finish at the 2004 Olympics – when they beat Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal – and the 2007 Asian Cup triumph all came against backdrops of war or civil strife.
That Asian Cup win briefly united a country tearing itself apart. This latest achievement carries a similar emotional charge. The aftershocks of the second Gulf war still shape daily life. Meulensteen speaks of cities that are rebuilding but remain a world away from the gleaming order of Dubai or the vast new projects in Saudi Arabia. Infrastructure is fragile. Logistics are complicated. Nothing is straightforward.
And yet, inside this national team, there is lightness. On the bus to training, Meulensteen listens to the squad singing, music blaring, players laughing. He calls it “absolutely brilliant”. It is a reminder that footballers, even those carrying a nation’s trauma, are still young men who want to enjoy the game.
The squad itself reflects a scattered identity. Some were born in Iraq, others are part of the diaspora, drawn back by heritage. Not all speak Arabic fluently. Meulensteen, who picked up the language to an intermediate level during his early coaching years in Qatar, helps bridge gaps where he can.
His own journey into the region began in 1993 with a personal twist: to move to Qatar and work, he had to marry his girlfriend because living together out of wedlock was not allowed. It was a small but telling example of how football careers often hinge on decisions far beyond tactics and training sessions.
Drawn into the deep end
The reward for Iraq’s marathon to Mexico is a group that looks unforgiving on paper: France, Senegal, Norway. Heavyweights, champions, rising powers. Meulensteen reaches for a vivid comparison: “It’s like Manchester United against Grimsby.” Only, as he notes, Grimsby won that tie in the Carabao Cup last August.
The point is clear. The gulf in resources and pedigree is real, but football does not always follow the script. Meulensteen knows that from experience. With Arnold and Australia at the last World Cup, he walked into another group where they were written off: France, Denmark, Tunisia. Australia still beat Denmark and Tunisia and pushed Argentina hard in the last 16.
For Iraq, the plan is similar. Use the element of surprise. Embrace the role of the outsider. Lean into the chaos that top seeds often fear. If you cannot match France or Senegal for depth, you unsettle them in other ways.
The World Cup will test every weakness in Iraq’s game, but it will also showcase their resilience. They have already proven they can handle adversity that no training camp can simulate.
From Carrington to Baghdad
Meulensteen’s presence on Iraq’s bench adds another layer to this story. The 62-year-old Dutchman is best known for his years under Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, where he built a reputation as one of the game’s sharpest individual coaches.
His route to Old Trafford came via Lee Kershaw, then academy director, and a recommendation from Dave Mackay, who had worked with him in Qatar’s youth system. Meulensteen began in United’s academy, then moved into bespoke work with first-team players. That role intensified after a brief spell as Brøndby head coach in 2007, when he returned to Manchester and started working closely with Ronaldo.
Those sessions were meticulous. Using video, he broke down finishing into zones inside the penalty area, teaching Ronaldo how to adjust his position, read the type of cross, and choose the most efficient finish. The message was clear: less show, more substance. Be unpredictable, yes, but in a way that leads to goals, not just applause.
Ronaldo’s obsession with improvement did the rest. At Carrington, there was a fenced cage with rebound boards where he would often stay behind after training, alone, for another 10 or 15 minutes. Meulensteen designed exercises for him in that cage, forcing him to handle the ball in different, creative ways. Ronaldo “absolutely loved” it.
All of that work from one season ended up on a DVD – essentially a PowerPoint presentation with clips – that Meulensteen gave Ronaldo. It covered not just technical details but the psychology of targets: people with clear goals, he told him, tend to be more successful than those without.
At the start of the 2007-08 season, the conversation turned to numbers. Ronaldo had scored 23 goals the previous year. His target was 30. Meulensteen pushed him to 40. Ronaldo agreed. He finished with 42 as United won both the Premier League and Champions League.
A few months later, in the summer of 2008, Ferguson promoted Meulensteen to first-team coach, handing him the keys to the training ground. On three flipchart sheets, Ferguson outlined how he believed Manchester United should play. Those pages became Meulensteen’s manual.
They covered defensive principles, possession play, and then, on the final sheet – the one Ferguson said mattered most – the essence of United in attack: pace, power, penetration, unpredictability. Four words that had to appear in every training session in some form. Look back at United at their peak under Ferguson and those traits are stamped all over them.
Coaching, words and fear
After leaving United in 2013, Meulensteen’s career bounced across continents: Fulham, the United States, Israel, India, then back onto the global stage with Australia and now Iraq. The variety has sharpened his understanding of players, especially how they handle doubt.
He talks to them about fear, not as a vague feeling but as something that needs a shape. What exactly are they afraid of? Often it is the consequences of not winning, the noise around failure. You cannot control every thought or every headline, he tells them, but you can control where you direct your focus: on playing well, scoring, reaching the World Cup.
His language with players is additive, not destructive. He asks them to “add” elements to their game rather than “change” who they are. The distinction matters. It builds, instead of stripping away.
That approach echoes Ferguson, who understood the power of a simple phrase. “Well done,” the Scot would say, often with a tap on the shoulder as training wound down. He told Meulensteen those were the two most important words in coaching. They cost nothing, but they stay with players.
The bond between the two men outlasted their time at United. Ferguson, a voracious reader with a deep interest in politics and history – especially the American civil war – could turn any trip into a quiz night. On away journeys, they would sit on the bus or train playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on Meulensteen’s iPad, regularly reaching the final question thanks to Ferguson’s encyclopaedic recall of everything from battles to movie trivia.
They still meet now and then for tea, talking for hours as time slips away. For Meulensteen, that United era remains a “beautiful period” of his life.
Now he stands on the touchline for Iraq, chasing another.
The setting has changed from Carrington’s manicured pitches to buses rattling through the night towards Baghdad. The players are different, the resources smaller, the odds longer. But the principles – clarity, courage, surprise – are the same.
This summer will reveal whether a team that crossed war zones to reach Mexico can carry that defiance onto the biggest stage of all.
