You have just a few minutes before kickoff to read this piece about coach Graham Arnold and Iraq’s journey to this stage. Well worth it.
Daniel Stauss is first in the inbox for this session: “Join me in dying on that hill - the World Cup does in fact include the qualifiers, we’re currently watching the finals of the World Cup, thank you for giving voice to my silent screams.”
Speaking of screams, if you’re watching in the USA, be prepared for multiple references to the fact that Tom Brady played football in this stadium. It’s in Boston. Well, not really. Foxborough, site of this stadium, is somewhere in the vicinity of Boston in the same sense that Cornwall is somewhere in the vicinity of Glasgow.
Updated
Norway guide and starting lineup
Our guide to Norway starts as follows:
Ståle Solbakken’s journey to becoming Norway manager arguably started at the 1998 World Cup when he sat as an unused substitute shouting suggestions to the coach, Egil Olsen, when Norway turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 victory against Brazil. Like his mentor Olsen, Solbakken has never been a naive or particularly romantic manager. He is a product of the northern European football school, where the result always holds the most weight. His style largely consists of tight zonal defending and aggressive attacking play focused on breaking through the lines – football that is as effective as possible.
My love of romantic soccer has dimmed through the years. If you can effectively bang the ball 50 yards up the field, go for it. Maybe it’s just because US youth development philosophy for a while shunned any kick of the ball longer than five yards.
Worth noting on Solbakken: His playing career ended when he collapsed on the field during a training session with Copenhagen in 2001 and was clinically dead for seven minutes.
On the field, Haaland is far from the only player who’ll be familiar to Premier League viewers. There’s captain Martin Ødegaard (Arsenal), fellow midfielder Sander Berge (Fulham) and defenders David Møller Wolfe (Wolves) and Kristoffer Vassbakk Ajer (Brentford). Goalkeeper Ørjan Nyland plays with Sevilla. The other clubs represented: Bologna, Borussia Dortmund, Benfica, RB Leipzig and Atlético Madrid.
In the year of the Geopolitical Cup, which includes one country’s team playing within the borders of a country with which it’s at war, Iraq’s road has been difficult. The U.S. military action of the 2000s is a not-too-distant memory, and the combat next door in Iran affected their final steps in a long journey back to the Big Dance, as explained in our team guide (“Arnold” is Graham Arnold, the team’s Australian head coach):
Iraq were a game away from qualifying for their first World Cup in 40 years, with a final against Bolivia in Monterrey, their 21st qualifier, but things didn’t go smoothly. War broke out in the Middle East, with airspace closed and flights grounded. Unable to gather his squad, Arnold, stuck in a hotel in the UAE, demanded Fifa postpone the playoff, but the clouds cleared and after a 12-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman and a 17-hour flight to Mexico, Iraq reached their destination, 10 days before the game.
The teams were tied at the half, but Aymen Hussein (most definitely not related to Saddam or Uday) became his country’s answer to Paul Caligiuri, scoring the goal that ended his country’s 40-year wait in the wilderness.
Hussein (Al-Karma, Iraq), by far the leading scorer on the team, starts up front alongside Ipswich Town’s Ali Al-Hamadi. Three other players, including goalkeeper and captain Jalal Hassan, play domestically. The other starters play in the Czech Republic, Uzbekistan, Poland (2), Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On the bench is Ahmed Qasam, who plays in the USA with Nashville SC.
My, that was an action-packed conclusion to France v Senegal, wasn’t it? We can only hope for half the excitement in the other half of Group I between two teams that have not played in the World Cup* this century.
Norway last played in the World Cup* in 1998 and upset Brazil to reach the knockout rounds. They also appeared the last time the Cup was held in the USA in 1994, missing out on the knockout rounds in peculiar fashion – four teams tied with four points and an even goal difference. Norway only scored once; therefore, they were the odd team out. Italy opened that group with a loss to Ireland and scraped into the knockout rounds as one of the third-place teams. Heard they made a bit of a run after that.
Iraq last played in the World Cup* in 1986, before any of the current players were born. (I was a rising senior in high school, but it’s safe to say their appearance isn’t something I recall, as I was mostly fretting about calculus and my lack of dating options.) They’re seeking their first World Cup point, having dropped all three matches in 1986, though only by one goal each. They’ve fared relatively well in Asian Cup play since the unlamented demise of the Hussein family, including the 2007 championship.
(* – technically, at least in ancient parlance, the “World Cup” includes the qualifiers, and the final 32, er, 48 teams are participating in the “World Cup finals.” So it’s not quite correct to say they haven’t played in the World Cup recently. I pledge to be less pedantic the rest of this session.)
Hello all, and I hope you’re all enjoying the debate over the no-call in the France-Senegal match (unanimous view in the referees’ message board I frequent: correct no-call) and also the goal that followed.
Follow along with Daniel Harris, and I’ll be back with a proper preamble when that one has ended.
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Nick Ames on Norway’s return to the World Cup:
If Norway’s highly fancied generation need a warning from history they need only look back 32 years and study the lessons from another searing, suspenseful American summer. They had raced through qualifying at England’s expense to reach their first World Cup since 1938; their top players were starting to make it in the Premier League and through the euphoria shone a confidence that a place in the knockout stage, at least, was there to be seized.
“When we got there we didn’t manage to even get close to the quality of play we had produced in qualification,” remembers Lars Bohinen, one of the silkier elements in a side that, under Egil Olsen, became renowned for an uncompromising and no-frills approach. “That’s the biggest disappointment when I talk now to my old teammates. We never got near to performing at the level we needed.”
In fact Norway were a shade unfortunate. Planted in a strength-sapping group alongside Mexico, Republic of Ireland and Italy, they finished fourth despite the teams finishing level on points and goal difference. Their failure came in attack; Olsen’s side were eliminated because they only scored once, beating Mexico before ultimately running aground in a famously sweltering goalless draw against Jack Charlton’s team at Giants Stadium.
This year’s Group I does not look much easier. But the dynamic of Norwegian football is different now; the not entirely inaccurate picture of burly Vikings replaced by elite, technically supreme talents in the moulds of Martin Ødegaard and Antonio Nusa. There is an Erling Haaland-shaped spearhead to convert chances that flow more frequently in Ståle Solbakken’s fast, flexible set-up.
Comment