Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  You cannot imagine Lars Lagerbäck disciplining anyone with any menace. A few hours later we are sitting in a café talking amiably about Icelandic society. ‘Besides football the character amongst the players and people in general is very, very good,’ Lagerbäck says, dressed in a blue Iceland tracksuit. ‘They are not spoilt and they are taking care of themselves. I like the country and the society as a whole.’ Lagerbäck is sixty-five now, affable, and aware that this is likely to be his last job in international football. He spotted, on taking the job, that Iceland was on the verge of something very special. ‘That is why I took it!’ he beams. ‘When I looked into it, the Under 21s qualified for the [2011] European Championships in Denmark. They are all twenty-three or twenty-four years old now and I thought that looks really interesting to work with young, talented players and some of the other players that were older, too.’ The decision to build seven full-sized indoor sports halls, just before the 2008 financial crash that bankrupted the country, allowed young players to train and play competitively in two seasons all year round. ‘I think the only chance for smaller countries is to develop youth players so they can go to top, bigger leagues,’ Lagerbäck says when I ask him what other smaller nations can learn from Iceland. ‘With all respect to smaller countries, and also Sweden is a small country, if the Swedish national team or the Icelandic national team didn’t have their best players in a good league, the national team couldn’t do well. That is the only advice that counts: that you educate young players so they can get out to the bigger leagues in Europe.’ Iceland is producing so much talent that they have got this far without, potentially, one of their best players. Aron Jóhannsson was born in the US but raised in Iceland, by Icelandic parents, and nurtured by Iceland’s youth system. He even played for Iceland’s Under 21 team. But that didn’t stop the US national team from offering him the chance to play for them, which he took. It was still something of a sore issue in Icelandic football circles.

  Even a few years ago the entire Iceland national team was amateur, with part-time players working as fishermen or journalists or studying for master’s degrees. Now the entire team plays in Holland, Denmark, England and beyond. All except one, who’s keeping Iceland’s spirit of amateurism alive. Goalkeeper Hannes Halldórsson isn’t sure whether he’s a goal-keeping film director or a film-directing goalkeeper. ‘My first film was a small action comedy when I was twelve with a group of friends,’ he says of his early life in Iceland. He has a shaven head and stands to attention, both hands behind his back, when he speaks. ‘I wasn’t the action hero. I made the film in 1996. It was a very simple technique. I managed to make it with a VCR and a video camera. It was like Superman but we called it Swimming Man. He was wearing a stupid outfit.’ Halldórsson was obsessed with film making and football as a kid and decided to pursue both, playing part-time for the Icelandic champions Knattspyrnufélag Reykjavíkur while making music videos and advertisements. His most famous film was the video for Iceland’s 2012 Eurovision Song Contest entry. ‘I was a little irritated I hadn’t been asked before,’ Halldórsson says bluntly. ‘I’m one of those names that is mentioned as things have been going well in directing commercials, so my name pops up. I was a Eurovision fan as a kid.’ ‘Never Forget’, by Greta Salóme & Jónsi, is a thumping, operatic metal boy-girl duet. The song came twentieth in the final with Norway awarding it five points. Still, it reached number two in the Icelandic charts and a more modest number ninety-four in Belgium. ‘She’s an elf, a mysterious figure,’ he says, explaining the video. ‘We have this elf belief in Iceland that goes back many centuries. It’s about a haunting woman this guy can’t forget. A mystic woman trying to entice him to the other side. It’s when he’s young, and he doesn’t go. When he’s older he goes all the way.’

  Halldórsson has been ever-present in the Iceland team and every bit as important as Kolbeinn Sigþórsson’s incredible scoring record of twelve goals in eighteen matches. The World Cup is one dream that he has. He has another. ‘It is my dream, to make one feature film before I quit football. I can only be a footballer and a commercial director because you can shoot for two days and then train for one. A film is forty days in a row.’ What kind of film is it, I ask. ‘It’s a horror film. Not a zombie film. It’s a supernatural, low-key ghost thriller that takes place somewhere in an isolated part of Iceland.’ His next job might have to be closer to home. Victory against Norway and then in the play-offs might require Halldórsson to shoot the video for the team’s official World Cup song.

  ‘I’d have to see some videos to see what you are talking about because I have no idea what that is,’ he says, confused.

  You know, like New Order’s ‘World in Motion’. You know New Order, right?

  ‘No, I’ve never heard of them,’ he says but thinks for a few moments, visualising what a World Cup music video would like if he did have to shoot one. ‘I would make some mix of maybe training videos and showing the nation taking part in it,’ he offers. ‘Er ... children running around in national outfits? Maybe a guy in a small store wearing an Iceland shirt?’ He gives up. ‘I don’t think it would be a horror video.’

  Halldórsson will start tomorrow night against Norway. He and the team mooch around in the lobby of the hotel. They have free rein to do pretty much whatever they want. There’s no press pack harassing them, no paparazzi looking to catch a glimpse of a WAG. ‘If people don’t take that responsibility they don’t belong in the squad I am coaching,’ Lagerbäck says. ‘I have very few examples where players haven’t responded with that. Look at now. After training the players are free to go out after lunch if they like. You have to treat them as normal people and players respond to that on the pitch, too.’ He had learned this, he says, after coaching perhaps the most strong-willed and talented of modern players. ‘When you compare it to Zlatan when he came into the team you had to find a role for him, he is that kind of player,’ Lagerbäck recalls. ‘That is basically what I changed in my philosophy when I started coaching national teams and working with world-class players. With skilful players you have to give them as much freedom as possible inside the team. You can’t run everything.’

  **

  Approximately 0.28 per cent of Iceland’s population have arrived at the Ullevaal Stadium on match day. Some of the 1,000 or so fans did not have far to travel. Norway is home to one of the biggest communities of Icelanders outside the country, but most have flown in for the day. ‘They have extremely good talent, the Icelanders, so we are not surprised. Icelanders are always optimistic about things,’ says Petur, a gruff middle-aged fan accompanying his daughter to her first away game. He talks slowly and says the word ‘optimistic’ as if telling the punchline of a joke. ‘Lagerbäck changed the team, extremely, I think. He has a lot of experience and before he came we had a bad run. It was not so good. I think we’ll win 3-1.’ Petur won’t be here for long. He returns to Iceland after the game to get back to his job as a fisherman. ‘I’m on a fishing trawler so you work twenty-four hours a day, twenty-five to thirty days at a time at sea.’ How do you catch up with the football, I ask him, on a boat that has to negotiate forty-foot waves? He looks at me pityingly. ‘We have satellite TV. And internet,’ he says, as if speaking to an idiot. ‘Sometimes the conditions are not so good. But most of the time it is … tolerable.’ There are few Norway fans to be found. Although they started the campaign as top seeds in the group Norway’s campaign soon fell away. The legendary Egil Olson had been reinstalled as coach. ‘Drillo’ had been in charge of Norway during the greatest period in the national team’s history. His scientific approach in the mid-nineties was years ahead and his methods wrung the maximum return from what was a modest amount of talent. He led the team to two World Cup finals. At one point, Norway were ranked the second best team in the world by FIFA. He had left to find fame abroad and had garnered a reputation as something of an eccentric for taking training in his famous green wellington boots and being one of the few figures in football who had something of a political p
ast: at one point he’d been a member of Norway’s communist party. Alas, Drillo failed at then English Premier League club Wimbledon, where he was sacked, and later with the Iraqi national team, where he was removed without warning as the country sank deeper into conflict. Still, he had returned to Norway with much hope, but the results didn’t change. A defeat to Switzerland saw him leave – although Drillo later claimed he felt he had no choice but to resign – and he was replaced by Per-Mathias Høgmo. Even that change made no difference. Høgmo lost his first match in charge, against Slovenia, and Norway were promptly eliminated. They now had nothing to play for.

  As the night draws in and the temperature plummets, the stands fill up with Icelandic flags. At the same time, thousands of miles away in the northern Ghanaian city of Kumasi, Bob Bradley is standing on the touchline at the Baba Yara Stadium in white shirtsleeves, arms folded, as Ghana play his Egypt side in the first leg of their African World Cup qualification play-off. Bradley knew this was arguably the most important match of his long career. It was about more than just winning a game. Bradley had seen World Cup qualification as his contribution to the revolution, a chance for the national team to be a symbol of some kind of unity at a time when Egyptians were more divided than ever. The whole campaign came down to this. A few thousand Egyptian fans had even travelled to Ghana for the match. Given the spectator ban in Egypt, it was a rare chance to see Egyptian players in the flesh.

  But within minutes of the start of the game the script has changed. Ghana score within four minutes and quickly go 2-0 up. Mohamed Aboutrika, the man Bradley calls his ‘blood brother’ because of the strong bond the two enjoy off the pitch, scores a penalty to give Egypt an away goal and some kind of hope. As half-time approaches smoke hangs so heavily over the pitch at the Baba Yara Stadium that it is impossible to see the ball fly into Egypt’s penalty area. So many flares have been lit during the first half that even the players are hard to pick out. But Abdul Majeed Waris has no problem seeing the ball; he rises higher than the rest and powers the ball down and into the net. Ghana now lead 3-1 at half-time. In the second half, Ghana go on the rampage. Egypt’s players appear to give up as Ghana score three more. The game ends 6-1 and Bradley’s hopes of finally breaking Egypt’s World Cup curse are all but over. There will be a return leg in Cairo, but they will have to win 5-0 against the best team in Africa.

  In the stands the Ghanaian police wade in to stop any trouble breaking out, not between rival fans but between the Egyptians themselves. Those fans, who had put their political differences to one side to support the same team, as the players had done, quickly turned on each other. A yellow flag with a black hand and four fingers had been flown. It is the ‘Rabaa’ sign, which means ‘four’ in Arabic: the symbol of the Pro-Morsi, anti-coup movement. To many Egyptians showing four fingers is a sign of support for the Muslim Brotherhood and akin to treason. The ugly confrontation is quashed and the flag removed. With the national team’s hopes for the World Cup all but gone, so, it seems, has the underlying need for unity. ‘The dream of going to the World Cup is what kept our team united,’ a disconsolate Bradley said after the game. ‘But we’ve seen that become nearly impossible.’

  **

  In Oslo it is only the Iceland fans who are making any noise. A drummer is leading the 1,000-strong group in song and dance as the match begins. ‘We don’t want to get our hopes too high,’ admits Kolbeinn Tumi Dadason, a football journalist covering the Norway game for an Iceland sports website. ‘They call it Eurovision fever. Every time we send a song to the Eurovision, we believe that it will win it and usually finish sixteenth. So we shouldn’t take anything for granted.’ But soon Iceland are 1-0 up thanks to Kolbeinn Sigþórsson, the Ajax striker, who has just scored his thirteenth goal in nineteen games. If they win it doesn’t matter what happens between Slovenia and Switzerland. But Norway’s dominance tells and they equalise fifteen minutes later. And that is it. Norway attack but Iceland easily contain them. When the full-time whistle blows no one knows whether it will be enough. Lagerbäck had said he would make sure there would be three ways of finding out the score in the other game in and around the dugout, but they’d all seemingly malfunctioned at the same time. Players and officials mill around in the centre circle talking. And then the news comes through. Switzerland have won, and Iceland have made it to the play-offs for the first time in their history. The squad sprints along the pitch in a long line towards the celebrating Iceland fans. They don’t jump into the stands – that’s not a very Icelandic thing to do – but dance and sing in front of the ecstatic crowd. One supporter stands out at the front, a huge bear of a man with a big beard and horned helmet, wearing nothing but a Superman onesie and wrapped in an Icelandic flag. He is crying like a baby and being held up off the floor by two men nearly as big as him. ‘We’re two games from the World Cup. HOW DO YOU THINK I FUCKING FEEL?! I’m from little Iceland!’ shouts Arni (as I later learned he was called) after I find him and ask him how he feels. ‘Do you hear my voice?’ he yelps. ‘I’d give it ALL. I’d give it all for this country.’ Thick tears splatter into my face. ‘I’m so fucking proud. We can stand tall! AGAINST WHOEVER!’ He finally breaks down, sobbing in my arms, soaking my cheek and the lapels of my jacket with his tears. Later Arni promises to travel to wherever Iceland plays its away play-off match, and wear his Superman onesie at the game. It is good luck now.

  **

  Across Europe, World Cup qualification is coming to an end. There have been few shocks. Spain have cruised home, as have Belgium, Italy, Holland and Germany. Switzerland, with its contingent of Kosovar players, have made it to Brazil without losing a match. Xherdan Shaqiri is by far the best Swiss player of the campaign. England have left it late to secure their place in Brazil, having won back-to-back matches against Montenegro and Poland at Wembley. Russia win their group, forcing Portugal into a play-off spot. It is left to Bosnia to try and become Europe’s only debutante at the 2014 World Cup finals. After the Slovakia game, where I had seen The Dragons fight back from 1-0 down to win in front of a home crowd of former refugees, Bosnia easily disposed of Lichtenstein 4-1. Four days later they travelled to Kaunas in Lithuania knowing any mistake would be punished by second-place Greece. In Slovakia players and fans had said the same thing. After everything the country had gone through, after every choke en route to a major tournament, they believed defeat now would be hard to recover from. As expected, it was like a home game for Bosnia and midway through the second half Vedad Ibišević received the ball six yards out all on his own in front of the Lithuanian goal. For a split second he didn’t seem to know what to do with it, given that he had so much time and space. But he poked the ball home and Bosnia had finally made it. Back in Sarajevo, 50,000 people were on the streets celebrating the proudest moment in the country’s short life. ‘I really can’t believe that we made it,’ Ibišević tells the New York Times after the win. ‘Definitely a dream coming true for me and the whole team. It took a little time to sink in. When we arrived back in Sarajevo, the people were in the streets and all so happy. The people didn’t really have many occasions over the last twenty years to celebrate anything. They kind of forgot what it was like. It was a great atmosphere and just a big party.’

  A few days later the European play-off draw will be made. France would play Ukraine, Romania will play Greece, Portugal will take on Sweden. And Iceland? They will play Croatia. ‘You never know in November you can have snow and minus temperatures,’ Lagerbäck says before he leaves the stadium. The weather is so bad in Iceland in November that a football match has never been hosted then. It could be minus ten. Lagerbäck gives a self-deprecating half-smile when I ask him where this achievement ranks in his long career. ‘This is a special thing,’ he replies. ‘Because this was a team that nobody really believed could do it.’

  15

  JORDAN, URUGUAY

  Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan. November 2013.

  As the car speeds north through wide open desert, passing caravans of
domesticated camels and Bedouin shepherds marshalling their flocks of goats, the Zaatari refugee camp slowly rises into view. It is a vast complex, ringed by 8.3 kilometres of white concrete walls and wire. Buildings and huts can be seen inside, as well as electrical wiring and satellite dishes that hint at a creeping permanence. As many as 150,000 people live here now. When times are bad a thousand more are added to the numbers every day. During quieter periods, only a few hundred arrive. Within eighteen months the Zaatari refugee camp has become Jordan’s fourth biggest city. It isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  Zaatari had been a nondescript hamlet, housing no more than a few hundred people, until 2012. Syria’s bloody civil war was by now one year old and hundreds of thousands of refugees had fled to neighbouring countries: north to Turkey, east to Iraq, west to Lebanon and, most of all, south across the border to Jordan. Zaatari lies just ten kilometres from the Syrian border and a further fifteen from the small city of Daraa, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule began in March 2011. The local infrastructure couldn’t handle the huge influx of people, many of whom were carrying horrific injuries and had witnessed unspeakable savagery. In July 2012 Zaatari opened and quickly filled. Life restarted, too. At the main gates Jordanian merchants peddle fruit and vegetables to their new and ever-expanding market. Young boys, no older than ten years old, weave around the legs of the adults pushing wheelbarrows as they keep an eye on the horizon. They are Syrians on the lowest rung of Zaatari’s new mercantile hierarchy, earning no more than one dinar a day ferrying the meagre possessions of the new arrivals into the camp. In just eighteen months a new social structure has sprung into life with a corresponding explosion in prices, the premium the poor have to pay in any disaster economy. There are satellite TV ‘shops’, caravans and tents converted into makeshift showrooms; a taxi service operates in the camp charging five dinars, just over £4, for a three-kilometre ride. Before the war, in fact even today anywhere in Jordan expect in Zaatari, five dinars would get you from the capital Amman to the Syrian border. Down one road in the camp, christened the Champs-Elysées, 685 shops can be found: neatly arranged kiosks selling tinned food, barbers selling haircuts, importers selling TVs and mobile phones; a pet shop that sells small birds. There is even a baker that specialises in wedding cakes and, nearby, a wedding dress shop. There are fifty-six mosques in Zaatari. Even in war and in exile life, and love, continues. In little over a year the camp has gone from being a sleepy and ignored mark on the map to one of the biggest refugee camps in the world with an economy worth an estimated £100 million a year, according to the UN.