The “key to success” in international football, according to Graham Arnold, is preparation.
So much for that.
Arnold was on a player scouting mission in Fujairah, on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates, when the war began on the morning of February 28. He could hear bombs landing across the Strait of Hormuz in Iran.
He was supposed to be returning to Baghdad that day.
“I packed my bag, turned on the BBC News: ‘Breaking news, Israel has just attacked Iran with a bomb.’ And we heard it,” Arnold said.
“We had a car take us to the airport in Dubai and on the way, the driver said, ‘The airspace has been shut down, the flights have been cancelled. What do you want to do?’”
Arnold went to Jebel Ali, on Dubai’s southern outskirts – a place he knows well from previous trips with the Socceroos – to stay as he waited for the airspace to open again. The next day, the war came to his doorstep. Debris from the interception of an Iranian bomb rained down on the port at Jebel Ali, about 500 metres away from where Arnold was staying.
“It shook the hotel to pieces, it was like an earthquake,” he said.
He thought he’d only be there for a couple of days, but Arnold ended up stranded in Dubai for 10 days, emergency alerts flashing on his phone at all hours – just before one of the most important moments of his coaching career.
Arnold, 62, has been working as Iraq’s coach since May; nobody in the past 40 years has taken them closer to World Cup qualification than he has. It all comes down to their play-off on Wednesday (2pm AEDT) in Monterrey, Mexico, against Bolivia. The winners will slot into Group I alongside France, Senegal and Norway at the World Cup.
But how could they get there? The airspace in Iraq was – and remains – closed, and two thirds of his squad, plus his backroom staff, live there.
From his hotel room in Jebel Ali, Arnold called for FIFA to intervene and postpone the play-off until just before the World Cup. That hasn’t happened, but Arnold’s public pressure brought FIFA to the table, and the world governing body assisted with their travel from Iraq to Mexico, providing security along the way.
It wasn’t easy. They were on a bus for 20 hours to Jordan, then took a FIFA-chartered flight to Lisbon, and from there to Monterrey. But they got there in the end.
After three cancellations, Arnold also eventually got a flight out of Dubai – but he sat on the tarmac that day for more than two hours because of another emergency alert.
“I was stuck on the plane, just looking up, going, ‘Oh my god, please no,’” he said.
Destination: Zagreb, eventually. There, Arnold reunited with his coaching staff, which includes a few familiar faces: former Newcastle Jets coach Rob Stanton, former Socceroos goalkeeper Zeljko Kalac, and his old assistant from the Socceroos, Rene Meulensteen.
Over the course of five days, they did the grunt work of coaching together: planning training sessions and analysing footage of their possible opponents. They also managed to squeeze in a catch-up with the legendary Mark Viduka, who lives in Zagreb and runs a cafe that has become a pilgrimage for Australian football fans in Croatia.
“We were in Zagreb, and Spider [Kalac] said, ‘Do you want to catch up with Dukes?’ I said, ‘F—, I’d love it.’ We went to his cafe,” Arnold said. “You should see it, he looks great. He’s got a beautiful place, a beautiful cafe, and he’s loving life. He said he’ll be watching.”
Which is all to say that Iraq’s preparation for this match has not been optimal. The original plan was to have players released from their clubs early to facilitate a training camp in Houston, Texas, where they would also play a warm-up friendly – the kind of lengthy hands-on access to players that Arnold could have only dreamed of having with the Socceroos.
“I would have preferred plan A,” Arnold said.
“That’s all been removed. We had to do plan B, and that was just to get out of Baghdad and get here. The boys arrived last Sunday. They’ve got great energy. The full focus is on performance and getting the job done.”
Having watched Bolivia’s 2-1 win over Suriname in person last week, Arnold is confident that Iraq – who only missed out on direct qualification through goal difference – can get the job done. He is happy with the fitness of his players, their technical ability and tactical discipline; the biggest challenge he sees is the mental burden of trying to break a 40-year World Cup hoodoo.
So he has imposed a total social media ban on his players – a classic Arnold move he deployed to great effect with the Socceroos at the last World Cup.
“The most important thing is they believe in what they’re doing,” he said.
“The slogan I’ve said this week: this is a life-changing week for you all. It can change not only their lives, but the nation as well.”
Arnold has spent eight of the past 10 months living in Baghdad, something he wanted to do so he could understand more about Iraqi people and the make-up of the country’s football community. It’s helpful in that respect that his personal interpreter is Ali Abbas, the former Iraq international who sought asylum in Australia after an Olympic qualifying match in Gosford, and later played under Arnold at Sydney FC.
Hiring Abbas, a good friend with deep knowledge of football slang in both countries, was a genius move by Arnold, who was brought undone by the language barrier in Japan many years ago.
“I can see the emotion in his face and eyes at times about what he wants to help do for the country,” Arnold said.
“When I get that feeling out of him, it gives me the passion as well.”
Should Arnold guide Iraq to victory, he’ll become the first Australian to coach at two different men’s World Cups, and an eternal hero to 46 million people. Having been Guus Hiddink’s right-hand man when the Socceroos’ 32-year World Cup heartbreak was extinguished against Uruguay, and having taken them there himself through the play-offs in 2022, he knows the impact it can have.
“I feel like I felt with the Socceroos, when they hadn’t qualified for all those years,” Arnold said.
“They played in Germany in 1974, and played in Germany in 2006. The last time Iraq qualified was Mexico 1986. Forty years later, we’re playing this game in Mexico. It’s an omen.
“We’ll be right. We’re ready.”
