Iraq 0-0 Jordan: COVID-19 has not changed Katanec’s outlook
At the empty socially-distanced Rugby Sevens Stadium in Dubai on Thursday, it was a new start for the Iraqi team and its national game. After an absence of 343 days, Iraq was back, in the very same battle-cry and tone of Iraq’s past Provisional Coalition Administrator, Paul Bremner, basically that everything on the outside looks to have changed, but nothing seems to change in the long-run. There is a new Minister of Youth in the ex-Iraqi defender, the brutish and bruising Adnan Dirjal (once charged with stealing a couple of Kuwait’s Gulf Cup trophies during the 1990 invasion of the tiny emirate as American PR companies surged to make the argument for war in the Middle East, much like the story of the Kuwaiti Ambassador’s daughter and the hospital incubators.) while the Iraq FA is under a new command, with a former political prisoner and ex-Al-Shurta Club president Ayad Benyan heading the FA’s new normalisation body. 48 hours later, the 11-year reign of Olympic Committee president, Raad Hammoudi, an ex-Iraqi national goalkeeper, came to an end, as Sarmad Abdelilah was elected by 19 votes to Raad’s 16.
There was much optimism after the start of the Iraqi League season, with a new $1.1m deal with sportswear manufacturer Umbro, an official league Neo Toba football, while a new national jersey will be announced for the start of 2021.
At the Iraqi team’s second training session at the Al-Shaab, came the presence of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who met with the coaching staff and players, as the Iraq FA announced a new sponsorship deal with the Iraqi Airways. Two days later, the squad flew to Dubai on a chartered Iraqi Airways plane.
With the questions over whether international football is a necessity in his current climate, four members of the team and the team’s fitness coach were struck down with COVID-19. Two players actually tested positive a day prior to the friendly with Jordan and there worries within the team’s camp that the match would be cancelled if there were any further positive tests. Iraq’s Ahmed Ibrahim missed out on making his 100th appearance for the Lions of Mesopotamia, a decade after his debut in the Emirates. Both Ahmed and Mohammed Ridha were forced to self-isolate in their hotel rooms for three days.
While everything around him seems to have changed, 11 months without football has not seemed to have altered anything in Iraq’s Srečko Katanec perspective, despite becoming a grandfather during the whole worldwide pandemic and signing a contract that will see him continue as coach of Iraq until 2021, making him the longest-serving foreign coach in the history of the Iraqi national team. The local media has spoken a lot about Katanec’s squad selections, but the Slovenian has kept faith with the same players before the whole crisis began. He criticised the leaks over his squad but there were no surprises and why should there be, the results under the coach have been positive of late and they sit top of their World Cup qualifying group, going into the final three matches.
Two players came in to make their international debuts on Thursday evening in Dubai. Maysan-born midfielder Mohammed Mizher, who joined Al-Shurta on a permanent basis, and the left-back Hassan Raed. The 20-year-old defender from Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya became the first player to appear for the Iraqi national side to have been born in the 21st century. The duo had been watched by Katanec while at the 2020 AFC U-23 Championship in Thailand, which seems a lifetime ago. Another story around the camp involved Mohammed Mizher and the toxicity of social media. The player had told the FA’s photographer Mohammed Amer Al-Azzawi not to include him in any of the team’s training sessions photos after receiving a barrage of online vitriol for the way he looked when previous photos were released by the Iraqi FA on their social media accounts.
The bore draw
On the 0-0 draw between Iraq and Jordan in Dubai, the score-line pretty much tells the story, it wasn’t a classic. Katanec deployed a 4-1-4-1 formation against Al-Nashama, with the often chastised goalkeeper and captain Jalal Hassan the team’s outstanding performer making a brilliant save in the first half to keep the game goalless.
The ingenuity of both Yasin Al-Bakhit and Mousa Al-Tamari and the robustness of Jordan’s captain Uday Al-Saify shone through and they had opportunities to open the scoring.
Iraq’s five-man midfield lacked creativity while the lack of pace from the Iraqi team did little to aid the lone frontman Mohanad Ali, scoring goals for fun in the Qatari League with Al-Sailiya, as the Lions of Mesopotamia looked tired and flat-footed. The Iraqi coach could be heard shouting his instructions to his players, frustrated by the lack of urgency and pressing, and later commented that his team had played the game at a slow walking pace.
Ali Adnan came on for a 27-minute cameo appearance after flying 11,724 km from Vancouver, straight after his club’s 3-0 home victory over LA Galaxy. With only 19 players available to him, Katanec was forced to play central defender Maitham Jabar in central midfield. Al-Shurta’s Mohammed Qasim, the two-goal hero against Qatar at the Gulf Cup last year, was back in Iraqi colours, months after a car crash in Najaf and while not on the same wavelength as many of his team-mates, the player looks to have recovered fully from his injuries.
Katanec has stated the two friendlies in Dubai will be used to prepare for the forthcoming World Cup qualifying matches, and will likely stick with the same players (injuries permitting). The Slovenian will not want to prod the team-spirit within the camp, bolstered immensely by the last-gasp win over Iran twelve months ago, and the 24 squad players on his list is a closed shop for now.
Katanec said in a recent Iraqi FA statement, on the Jordan game and the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected his team.
“In Europe was the problem, because the players do not make training for a month or two, in Iraq, we stop everything from February so this is almost, and we start training from 25th of September, if I am not wrong, so 15th, ok. They start with the league, they play three games, and it’s obviously, they will get a problem. So and, not we have the problem, we see now how they are, we know the situation.”
On tomorrow’s game with Uzbekistan.
“I don’t care about the friendly match. I like to see tomorrow, they need to give maximum, from the beginning, to run and not to walk, because mostly of the game against Jordan, we walk from the beginning, so I would like to see how long we can run but run fast, press, five minutes, five minutes, after that walk, so this is friendly matches I’m not under the pressure regarding result. I’d like to see the players enjoy, they run, they look for each other, they make combination and that’s it. This is important for us to see where we are and we need to be in top when in March.”
“(We have) 16 players, so we will change something, we will try to do something different, before the match, start of the match, during the match, so we will take some data then how the players can react if we can change the system during the game.”
Match Details
Iraq 0-0 Jordan
12/11/2020, The Sevens Stadium (also known as Rugby Sevens Stadium), Dubai
IRAQ: 12 Jalal Hassan [c], 5 Ali Faiz, 4 Saad Natiq, 21 Hassan Raed (6 Ali Adnan 63’), 17 Alaa Mahawi (3 Mustafa Mohammed 87’), 14 Amjad Atwan, 11 Humam Tariq (7 Mazin Fayadh 82’), 8 Ibrahim Bayish, 13 Bashar Resan (23 Maitham Jabar 74’), 22 Mohammed Mizher (19 Mohammed Qasim 46’), 10 Mohanad Ali (18 Ayman Hussein 63’).
COACH: Srečko Katanec (Slovenia)
JORDAN: 22 Abdullah Al-Fakhouri (1 Amer Shafeh 90’), 21 Salim Alajalin, 3 Tariq Khattab, 5 Yazan Alarab, 2 Firas Shilbaya, 13 Khalil Bani Attiya, 7 Nour Al-Rawabdeh, 10 Mousa Suliman Al-Tamari, 8 Uday Al-Saifi [c] (17 Anas Ahmed Hamad 73’), 11 Yasin Al-Bakhit (23 Ahsan Haddad 73’), 9 Baha Saif Faisal (20 Ali Alwan 82’).
COACH: Vital Borkelmans (Belgium)
Referee: Adil Ali Ahmed Khamis Al-Naqbi (UAE)
Assistant Referees: Jassim Abdulla Yousef Abdulla Al-Ali (UAE) & Nawaf Shahin Mousa (Bahrain)
Fourth Official: Amer Musaed Al-Dhubiea (UAE)
Cautions: None.