São Paulo – Zico, a former star player for Flamengo and the Brazilian National Team, has a goal for 2014: qualifying the Iraqi national team, for which he has been the coach since August, for the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Not an easy task, considering that his new team ranks 109th in the ranking of national teams of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa). It also is not an impossible one. His rivals in the qualifiers group are Jordan, China and Singapore. Zico is also in charge of managing the youth teams in a government project that is part of the country’s reconstruction.
The coach arrived in Brazil coming from the Arab country during the weekend, and should return to Iraq on Saturday. In the meantime, he is going about his projects in his native country. This Tuesday morning (13th) in São Paulo, Zico and former striker Ronaldo were to launch a website for football lovers willing to pursue careers as players: Pnera (www.pnera.com). During the event, held at the Football Museum, Zico spoke on his experience heading the Iraqi national football team.
Even though the coach is aiming to participate in the World Cup, Iraqi football managers have a broader, longer-term project. They want to rebuild the country’s football. “I was expecting [Iraqi football] would be a bit more professionalized, but I understand all that happened in terms of war, the way the federation changed. To give you an idea, the vice president of the federation is a guy who was exiled, he was against Saddam Hussein’s regime. He returned three months ago, and now they want to promote a big overhaul, to leverage Iraqi football once again, to professionalize,” says the coach. The Iraqis even offered him a contract ending in 2018. Zico is signed until 2014.
In turn, the Iraqi federation has other missions. One of them is taking the team’s matches to Baghdad. Presently, the team trains and plays in Erbil, in the Iraqi Kurdistan, a peaceful place according to Zico. The city hosted Zico’s debut match, in which Iraq lost to Jordan 2 to 1, on September 2nd. “The debut was very tense because it was the first official match after many years and even though the team played well, it lost many goals. We ended up losing,” said Zico.
In the second match he got his first win coaching the team: he beat Singapore 2 to 0. In October, the challenge will be to win the two matches against China – one at home, another away.
The coach does not conceal the fact that one of the reasons for him to accept the Iraqi invitation was the desire to run a football team again. The last club he coached was the Greek Olympiakos, in 2010. He has also coached CSKA, from Russia, Bunyodkor, from Uzbekistan, Fenerbahçe, from Turkey, and the Japanese national team in the World Cup 2002. It was his stint at the Japanese national team, where he won 38 out of 72 matches played, that drove the Iraqis to seek Zico. On the Brazilian’s side, what led him to accept coaching the team of a war-wrecked country was the challenge of taking part in its rebuilding.
“I feel proud that the work I did in Japan was a factor [in being invited]. I really want to contribute through football. Of course it is a burden, having your name picked for such an end. A very important mission, I hope it will be worthwhile,” he said.
In addition to coaching the team and supervising the technical committees of the youth teams, Zico has other dreams. One is to coach the Iraqi team in a friendly match against Brazil. He confirmed that such possibility does exist, and even committed to helping find a way to take the Brazilian team to Iraq. He stressed, however, that no official talks have taken place regarding the matter yet.
“If I had to intermediate [the negotiations for the match], I would be pleased to, so long as they (the Iraqis) show that the players will be safe and at peace. After all, Brazil did play Haiti [in 2004], didn’t it? They guaranteed full safety, didn’t they? Brazil is a catalyst for the unity of peoples, and it could do it once again,” he said.
In the meantime, Zico is concerned with finding a place to live and getting the team together. He will probably live in Erbil, but will take his family to Portugal, because the former Flamengo midfielder is also a Portuguese citizen, and the European country is not as distant from Iraq as it is from Brazil.
While seeking a place to live in, Zico will go to Uzbekistan to watch a match with the Iraqi Olympic football team. The team’s athletes cannot be older than 23. Zico claims that the Iraqi team is good, but the average age of current players is around 30, too old to play the World Cup. He intends to recruit younger athletes.
Zico is also beginning to plan the team that will play two matches against China. The outcomes of these matches will determine whether Iraq will go on seeking a slot in the World Cup 2014. The [Olympic] team has promising, talented, highly technical players who, if polished well, may be very important to the development of Iraqi football,” he said.
*Tradução de Gabriel Pomerancblum
