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Nani's Early Goal Gives Man United Victory MANCHESTER (Reuters) - Winger Nani's early strike gave Manchester United a 1-0 win over Bursaspor in Champions League Group C on Wednesday as a subdued Old Trafford digested striker Wayne Rooney's confirmation that he wanted to leave. Portugal international Nani broke the deadlock in the seventh minute when he turned and ran towards goal before unleashing a fine curling shot from 20 metres out. feeds.nytimes.com |
No political gain in Iraqi football – so leave the players well alone In 2004, George Bush used the national team as a symbol of hope. Six years on and Fifa is threatening to suspend the FAWho could have known, when Bill Shankly came to make his famous assessment of the relative importance of football and matters of life and death, that it would one day appear the most quaint of understatements?We live in an age where bombastic public figures regularly make far more outlandish claims for football's place within the great scheme of things. It is perfectly normal to cast football as the ultimate symbol of national hope, or an agent of social change, or a geopolitical pawn essential to mining stability in the Urals – anything, really, so long as it's not the desperately prosaic fact of two teams of 11 kicking a ball around.New stadiums are talked about less as places to watch football, and more as tools of urban regeneration. There exists an organisation whose sole aim is to use the game to bring an end to conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere. Many like to think the 1969 war between El Salvador and Honduras was fought because of football – in fact, it had that little bit more to do with land reform and immigration than the 1970 World Cup qualifiers – while elsewhere the game is expected to be an agent of world peace.It was not ever thus. Consider that legendary kickabout during the 1914 Christmas Day truce in the first world war – a lovely story and all that but, given the years of mass slaughter that followed, you'd hesitate to argue that it was a transformative event. Had it taken place today, however, some blowhard would have cast it as immensely significant before the first letters about it had reached home. Certainly before the subsequent telegrams about most of the participants' senseless deaths had arrived, anyway.And so to Iraq, where initial American crowing about the country's football renaissance continues to backfire informatively. Quote of the week comes courtesy of one Khaled Tawfic – five times head of Iraq's national athletics association – who laments that the disarray in the Iraqi Football Association is such that Fifa may yet again have cause to suspend it. There are allegations of political interference, members have been physically threatened, armed men claiming to be officials have raided its premises with a warrant for the arrest of its president …"Of course democracy is preferable in theory," Mr Tawfic explains tartly to the Times, "but interference and bribes began affecting the committees."Swings and roundabouts, innit? Back when Saddam was in charge, he claims, things ran infinitely better. "Honestly, it was more successful than now," Tawfic declares blithely, "because they selected qualified people."By happenstance – we'll rule out the possibility of a coordinated attack – it was this very week that Bernie Ecclestone reiterated his distaste for democracy, and took the trouble to cite Iraq as an example. Saddam Hussein, he reminded the Guardian, made Iraq a more stable country. "Absolutely," quoth Bernie. "It's been proved, hasn't it?"Where you stand on that point is up to you. But what we can say for sure is that if ever there were a tale to make one consider the wisdom of hijacking football as a symbol, Iraq would surely be it. Even as coalition forces limbered up for their second, immensely bloody assault on Fallujah in 2004, George Bush was co-opting the Iraqi national side as a symbol of hope for his re-election campaign adverts, underscoring that football is not just more important than life and death from white phosphorus, but far more "symbolic" than things such as water and electricity. "The ad simply talks about president Bush's optimism and how democracy has triumphed over terror," a White House spokesman insisted.If only the players had seen it that way. "He can find another way to advertise himself," snapped the midfielder Salih Sadir."How will he meet his God having slaughtered so many men and women?" another player asked. "He has committed so many crimes.""What is freedom," demanded the despairing coach, "when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"Six years on and there hasn't exactly been progress – though these days the exploiters prefer to quack that the power vacuum at the Iraqi FA holds a mirror to the instability in the government itself.How any game in Iraq manages to bear the weight of expectation and layers of supposed symbolism placed upon it one can only guess. But if, in the coming weeks, Fifa does decide to suspend the country, others should use the opportunity to reflect on the exploitative folly of declaring Iraqi football's every move symptomatic of events way beyond its proper concern. Let the players play, or don't – but let them well alone.IraqMarina Hydeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |