Iraq's Journey to the World Cup: A Tale of Endurance and Triumph

The road to Mexico started on broken tarmac.

For Iraq’s players and staff, the journey to a first World Cup in 40 years was not a neat hop across continents but a test of endurance that belonged more to a war diary than a fixture list. Airspace closed, a country dragged into conflict, and a decisive playoff fixed thousands of miles away in Monterrey. Somehow, they went anyway.

“They had to travel from different cities to Baghdad by car or bus,” recalls René Meulensteen, assistant to head coach Graham Arnold. “Some of those journeys took up to eight hours.”

Only then did the real trek begin: roughly 15 hours on rough, unforgiving roads from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, one of the few places where flights still took off.

The Asian-based players converged on Amman from their own starting points. The squad finally gathered, patched together from different corners of the region, united by one destination.

Fifa had laid on a private charter. Even that turned into another wait. Nine hours on the ground, then an eight‑hour flight to Lisbon, a two‑hour stopover, and a 12‑hour haul to Mexico. By the time the plane touched down, Iraq had already survived a marathon before the game that mattered most.

“It was the most important game in their lives,” Meulensteen says. A former Manchester United coach under Sir Alex Ferguson does not use that kind of phrase lightly.

They recovered. They regrouped. And they won.

Iraq beat Bolivia 2-1 in Monterrey to claim the final place at the World Cup. The stadium might have been neutral on paper, but it did not feel that way.

“All the remaining tickets were given to local Mexicans, so they were there in a big number, together with a large group of Iraqis based in the US,” Meulensteen says. The noise, the colour, the sense of something bigger than a playoff tie – it all swirled around a team that had spent days on the move just to stand on that pitch.

The setting added a twist of fate. Iraq’s only previous World Cup appearance, in 1986, also came in Mexico. The coaching staff leaned into that history.

“We told the players: ‘Let’s realise what kind of journey we’ve had to get here and perhaps the match is meant to be here, as Iraq’s previous World Cup participation was staged in Mexico.’”

Back home, the payoff arrived in the early hours.

“It was absolute madness in Baghdad, where it was early in the morning,” Meulensteen says, having watched videos of the celebrations. Streets erupted. Car horns blared. Fireworks cut through the dark. “The whole nation has been craving something to celebrate and this gives people a huge boost of energy and hope. You can really feel the sense of pride; there’s a genuine feelgood factor.”

Iraq have known these rare, soaring moments before. Fourth place at the 2004 Olympics, beating Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal on the way. The 2007 Asian Cup triumph that briefly united a country torn apart by civil war. Even the 1986 World Cup and that Athens run came against a backdrop of conflict and instability.

“Iraq is still a country that is really feeling the aftereffects of the second Gulf war,” Meulensteen says. “You can see that in the cities. They are recovering, but logistically and organisationally you can’t compare it to Dubai or places in Saudi Arabia.”

Yet amid the scars, he has found warmth and joy.

“You should hear them on the bus to training and matches, singing and listening to music,” he says. “It’s absolutely brilliant.”

Now comes the hard part. Iraq have been dropped into one of the tournament’s shark tanks: France, Senegal and Norway.

“It’s like Manchester United against Grimsby,” Meulensteen quips. On paper, at least. But he knows what happens when the underdog refuses to read the script. Grimsby did win that cup tie last August. Meulensteen has lived this kind of storyline before.

With Arnold, he helped Australia punch above their weight at the last World Cup, emerging from a group containing France, Denmark and Tunisia. “We had France, Denmark and Tunisia in our group and weren’t given much chance of going through either,” he says. Australia beat Denmark and Tunisia and made Argentina work for their win in the last 16.

“That’s where our biggest strength lies: the element of surprise.”

The Iraqi squad reflects a wider diaspora: players born in the country, others with Iraqi heritage. Not all speak Arabic. Meulensteen does, at an intermediate level, a skill rooted in his first major leap abroad. When he moved to Qatar in 1993 to coach, he had to marry his girlfriend because living together out of wedlock was not allowed.

That decision set off a chain of events that eventually led him to Old Trafford. He arrived at United eight years later, via academy director Lee Kershaw and a recommendation from Dave Mackay, who had worked with him in Qatar’s under‑17 setup. Meulensteen started in the academy, then moved into individual work with first‑team players.

The role grew after a brief spell as Brøndby head coach. By 2007 he was working closely with Ronaldo, then a dazzling winger still refining the brutal efficiency that would define his peak.

“I had several sessions with him on and off the pitch, using videos to show certain things,” Meulensteen says. They broke down finishing, split the penalty area into zones, analysed the angles and types of crosses, and matched each with the most effective finish. The aim was simple: turn talent into inevitability.

He pushed Ronaldo to strip back the unnecessary and sharpen the rest. “I told him it’s all about being as unpredictable as possible, varying your game … Over the years, he mastered that perfectly.”

What struck him most was Ronaldo’s obsession with improvement. At Carrington, there was a fenced cage with rebound boards. Training would end. Ronaldo often would not.

“After training he would often go in there by himself for another 10 or 15 minutes,” Meulensteen says. The coach designed exercises using those boards, forcing Ronaldo to handle the ball in different, creative ways. “He absolutely loved that.”

At the end of that season’s work, Meulensteen compiled everything into a DVD – essentially a PowerPoint with video clips – for Ronaldo. Technical details, yes, but also a message: set clear goals. People with targets, he told him, are far more likely to reach them.

So at the start of 2007‑08, after Ronaldo had scored 23 goals the previous year, Meulensteen asked for a number.

Ronaldo said 30.

“What about 40?” came the reply.

Ronaldo agreed. He finished with 42 as United won both the Premier League and the Champions League.

By the summer of 2008, Ferguson promoted Meulensteen to first‑team coach and handed him the keys to training. The Scot’s instructions came on three flipchart sheets, a distilled vision of how Manchester United should play.

“It covered principles both defensively and in possession,” Meulensteen says. The final sheet mattered most. It captured United at full throttle. “When we attack, I want to do so with pace, power, penetration and unpredictability. And I want you to apply those four things in every training session in some way.” Look back at United at their peak under Ferguson and those four words are everywhere.

After leaving Old Trafford in 2013, Meulensteen’s path meandered: Fulham, spells in the US, Israel, India, then the Australian national team. Each stop added layers to his understanding of players, especially how they wrestle with doubt.

“If they experience fear, I ask them to give it a shape,” he explains. Define it. Is it the fear of the consequences of not winning? Of failure, of criticism, of letting people down? Thoughts will wander; they always do. “You don’t always have control over everything that comes into your head, like what you see and what you hear.” So he drags their focus back to what they want – to play well, score, reach the World Cup.

His language is deliberate. He asks players to “add” to their game, not change it. Ferguson understood that power too. “He always said the two most important coaching words are: well done,” Meulensteen says. Near the end of sessions, Ferguson would stroll past, tap him on the shoulder and offer exactly that.

They built a bond that went beyond tactics. “He is a great storyteller and has very broad interests,” Meulensteen says. Ferguson devours books on politics and history, is fascinated by the American civil war, reels off details about movies and actors. On away trips, they would often sit on the bus or train playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on Meulensteen’s iPad. “The number of times we made it to the end is unbelievable. He knew things I would have never known.”

They still meet occasionally for a cup of tea, two hours disappearing in conversation. United, Meulensteen says, was a “beautiful period” of his life.

Now he stands at the heart of another story, one written on dusty roads, in overcrowded buses and in a country desperate for something to believe in. The stage is Mexico again. The odds are stacked again. The element of surprise is theirs again.

This summer will show whether Iraq can turn that into something the world will remember.