Iraq Wins Asian Cup Soccer Championship
Remember not too many years ago when Uday Hussein would kill members of national Iraqi teams who didn’t win? He was in charge of the Olympics but I’m sure he was in charge of other things too.
Well, today the Iraqi soccer team defeated the Saudi team to win the Asian Cup for soccer, and instead of killing people there was a sense of national pride.
Iraq erupted in joy and celebratory gunfire on Sunday when the country’s national football squad won the Asian Cup and united its bitterly divided communities in a rare moment of celebration.
Thousands of Iraqis, including members of the security forces, defied a strict government ceasefire order to welcome the team’s 1-0 victory over local rivals Saudi Arabia with an intense barrage of gunfire.Soldiers, police and civilian gunmen loosed off long volleys of automatic fire skywards and into the waters of the Tigris within seconds of the final whistle in Jakarta, beamed live to cafes and homes across the country.
The Iraqi victory against the three-time Asian Cup champions was a precious moment of shared national joy in a country beset by civil strife.
“Now it is our right to enjoy this victory that our heroic team has brought to us. They have brought us joy that we never experienced in the past, when we suffered greatly,” said Haidar Mustafa, a Baghdad student.
Around him in a downtown coffee shop, dozens of fans leapt and sang with joy after seeing skipper Younis Mahmoud’s powerful header seal a first Asian Cup victory for his mixed team of Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Kurds.
From the southern Shiite port city of Basra, to executed Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein’s northern hometown of Tikrit and even to Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, flag-waving crowds celebrated.
What a difference the deaths of those thugs has meant, and for the first time, we are seeing national unity and not just sectarian unity.
Maybe there’s some hope for the Iraqi people after all.
Written by ~J~
University Update - Iraq - Iraq Wins Asian Cup Soccer Championship Says:
July 29th, 2007 at 10:51 pmVisit University Update - Iraq - Iraq Wins Asian Cup Soccer Championship
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Sue Says:
July 30th, 2007 at 12:44 amVisit Sue
I was in New York City when the American Hockey Team defeated the Soviets in the Olympics. There was just a feeling of joy in that city and across America when these young men achieved what seemed impossible.
That has to be what the Iraqi’s felt seeing their country pull off this (what was considered) upset.
I am so happy for them and in reading Iraq the Model last night, I can only imagine what it must have been like to feel such a part of this huge victory. Congratulations to Team Iraq. Well done.