**
It is just three hours until kick-off and the roads that lead towards the Amman International Stadium are awash with noise. Security has swamped the area. It is rumoured that King Abdullah II, his wife and the crown prince will be coming to the game. Police riot vans and motorcycles move up and down the highway that passes the stadium, their sirens screaming at a painful volume. Lines of riot police in full body armour ring the stadium, stopping anyone from walking even an inch down the route they are guarding. Street vendors hand out posters of the Jordanian team and plastic versions of the traditional red and white headscarf, just in case it rains. A line of men sell a stack of Jordanian flags to a group of women in full black abayas and niqabs. Female police officers hang around by a wall nearby, wearing their trouser uniforms with the specially designed head covering under their caps. Groups of young men, shebab, run around, excitedly predicting a huge Jordanian victory. As ever in the lead-up to an important match in Jordan, it is chaos, like a thousand cats running in a thousand different directions. For the Uruguayans who had made it to the game, it was likely to be the furthest, most expensive and most alien away trip they would ever experience. ‘We just arrived, I don’t know how far it is,’ says Luis Castillo, a sixty-five year old doctor, who has flown from Uruguay. ‘We flew Montevideo–Rio, Rio–Dubai, Dubai–Amman. It’s a long journey. We don’t know anything about the Jordanian team but people have been friendly. Unusually friendly.’ He says the last words suspiciously, given that caustic reception away fans get in Brazil or Argentina. ‘They want to take pictures with us,’ he says. ‘That is very unusual. We’ll be cautious: 1-0 and win it in Montevideo.’
They will be the only Uruguayans from Uruguay that I meet. Busloads of fans dressed in blue and white line up to get inside, speaking in an accent that sounds familiar. ‘This is my grandfather Miguel and he is the King,’ says Eran, a Uruguayan supporter with a thick, rolling, unmistakably Israeli accent. Although Jordan and Israel have a peace treaty, few Israelis risk travelling to Jordan, especially given the deteriorating security situation in most of the region. Almost everyone in the line is from Israel. Eran had been born in Israel but his grandfather Miguel had made aliyah, the Jewish return to the land of Israel, from Uruguay in the 1950s. Miguel was in his eighties now, clutching an old flag in his hands. He has not seen Uruguay play since he travelled to Rio to watch the 1950 World Cup match between Brazil and Uruguay at the Maracanã. He had witnessed the Maracanazo first-hand and had bought a flag on the morning of the game, the same flag he had in his hands today. ‘I bought this when I was at the Maracanã,’ he says in Hebrew, Eran translating for him. ‘It was wonderful.’
‘We have come from Israel to see La Celeste,’ Eran admits finally. His brother is here, too. It is the first time either had ventured into Jordan. ‘We have never been here before because it’s dangerous for us,’ he laughs. ‘We are going under cover.’ The hundreds of Uruguayan fans push past, through the single concrete door, the police unaware of the crowd’s true identity. ‘We came with all the family who are from Uruguay,’ explains Romi, a female fan who has also travelled from Israel. ‘Uruguay is too far. It has been OK. We’ve been fine so far.’ What do you think the score will be? ‘I think it’ll be 5-0 to Uruguay.’ Won’t it perhaps be best to hope for a draw? So the atmosphere isn’t too tense. Romi laughs in my face. ‘It won’t happen! I’m sorry. Go Celeste!’
**
Romi is, of course, correct. The stadium is full two and a half hours before kick-off as Jordan’s fans throng to see an upset. The rules of the underdog have been turned on their head for the evening. Uruguay may have all the stars and two World Cup wins behind them, but they are by far the smallest country ever to win it and still one of the smallest countries ever to participate in the finals. In population terms, Jordan is twice as big as Uruguay although both are giants next to Iceland. Still, it is Jordan that come out strongest. For the first five minutes they burst down the right wing time and time again. Jordan’s right-back Oday al Saify almost manages to squeeze the ball past Uruguay’s goalkeeper Martin Silva. Al Nashama are, at the very least, ahead on corners. But, soon enough, Uruguay slowly but effectively constrict Jordan, and go ahead. After several terrible misses, one by the strangely quiet Suárez, Maxi Pereira slides in almost on the line to put Uruguay into the lead. When half-time comes it is 2-0.
At half-time the game’s special guest, King Abdullah II, arrives wearing a red Jordan T-shirt with the number 99 on the front under a black blazer. The quiet crowd is reignited and the players respond. For the first ten minutes of the second half Jordan are a different team, pouring forward knowing that a goal might change the course of the game. The ball is crossed in from the right and Ahmad Hayel, the hero against Japan and the player whom Jordan’s fans believe will outshine Uruguay’s world-class strikers, splits La Celeste’s centre-backs. He is free with an open goal but somehow he fires wide. He lies on the turf with his head in his hands. His team-mates lie on the turf with their heads in their hands. King Abdullah jumps into the air thinking Jordan have scored and then slumps back into his seat. He is holding his head in his hands, too. A few minutes later Uruguay go 3-0 up, then 4-0. By the time Edinson Cavani scores, an immaculate, curling free-kick into the top right-hand corner to make it 5-0, the Jordanian supporters can do nothing but applaud. Jordan’s World Cup hopes are all but over. After the final whistle a few supporters blame the defeat on Hossam Hassan and his young and experimental line-up, one he says he was forced to make, but there is no anger directed at the players or anyone else. Uruguay’s fans quickly leave the Amman International Stadium, slipping over the West Bank border that night, taking their secret home to Israel with them.
16
THE LAST THIRTY-TWO
Zagreb, Croatia. November 2013.
Iceland and Croatia are standing in line for the national anthems in the middle of a misty, freezing and miserable Maksimir Stadium. A sleety rain that has been falling most of the day has only just abated and the stadium is almost full. There is none of the euphoria that had greeted Croatia when I was last in Zagreb eight months previously. On the way to the stadium a few hundred Croatian fans filled beer tents that had been set up along the street, huddling together for warmth as a DJ played nationalistic rock songs that the crowd bellowed back. In March, when Serbia came to town, things were different. It was early spring and the sun shone in Zagreb’s main square as it filled with tens of thousands of Croatia supporters drinking and singing. The roads up to the stadium had been closed by the police and turned into one big open-air bar full of supporters of all ages carrying flags with the names of their home towns written on them.
Croatia had beaten their old enemy that day. The teams’ two coaches, Igor Štimac and Siniša Mihajlović, had buried the hatchet that day, too, and embraced on the pitch after the game, even as the crowd chanted ‘Kill the Serbs’. Both men met once more, this time in Belgrade. As expected, the atmosphere was equally as electric and loaded with history. It finished 1-1 but two players were sent off. When Croatia’s Josip Šimunić was shown a red card for a vicious professional foul, he nearly caused a riot. As he walked to the tunnel he was pelted with chairs and missiles. Flares were thrown, too. ‘We didn’t pay too much attention to what was going on in the terraces because that happens a lot in Croatia, too, and I can only hope that fans in this part of the world start behaving themselves soon,’ was all Štimac had to say about the sending-off after the game. Eight months earlier he had promised a lifetime ban for any Croatian player making any inflammatory tackles against Serbia. But the result had secured Croatia second place in a group Belgium easily won, and with it a play-off spot. It was an added bonus that they had eliminated Serbia in the process. But this wasn’t enough for the Croatian press, who had grown increasingly unhappy with Štimac’s reign, especially his tactical tinkering. When Croatia lost to Scotland Štimac’s days were numbered and he was replaced with young and inexperienced former international midfielder
Niko Kovač for the play-offs. Mihajlović, too, had been moved on after his unsuccessful campaign.
There was no euphoria, yet Croatia were now just ninety minutes away from Brazil. They had been drawn against Iceland in the European play-off, the lowest ranked team left and the team everyone wanted to draw, but the first leg in Reykjavik had not gone well. The snow and the wind that Iceland’s Swedish coach Lars Lagerbäck suggested might arrive had not materialised but his team had managed to grind out a 0-0 draw, even after playing most of the second half with only ten men. Now they, too, were only one game away from qualifying and becoming the smallest nation to appear at a World Cup. If Iceland succeeded they would prove to be one of the greatest underdogs of all time.
World Cup qualification was coming to an end across the globe. In every continent the final group positions had been calculated. All that was left was the play-offs in Europe, Africa and the two intercontinental matches between Uruguay and Jordan and Mexico and New Zealand. Mexico had just managed to scrape fourth place in their group but they needed the help of the Americans to do it. The US beat Panama 3-1, meaning Mexico qualified for their play-off even after they lost their final game. And when it mattered, El Tri turned it on, smashing New Zealand 5-1 in the first match in the Azteca and virtually securing their place in Brazil, too.
It is largely left to Iceland to upset the odds, and the home match has given them confidence. ‘It’s going to be a busy game,’ Iceland’s film-making goalkeeper Hannes Halldórsson admitted the day before. ‘We always have ambition to go further than the size of the population allows us to do. They are one of the best teams in the world so it’s a David and Goliath scenario. But now the pressure is on Croatia.’ Iceland are missing their top scorer after Kolbeinn Sigþórsson was seriously injured in the first game but there is an experienced replacement in Eidur Gudjohnsen. Everyone in the team believes that their time has come, even the cautious Lagerbäck. ‘I think we have a good chance,’ he says, explaining that Iceland’s success offers a blueprint for other small nations on how to take on the bigger teams. ‘Even if you are a third division team, if you put in a good performance maybe you can beat a first division side.’
The teams sing their national anthems and take their positions at opposite ends of the pitch. A banner is unfolded across one stand thanking, in English, the Icelandic nation for being the first country in the world to officially recognise an independent Croatia state. For once, no one is threatening to kill anyone.
**
On the top floor of a nearby hotel a few hours before kick-off, the Icelandic federation is hosting a crash course in Croatian football. The room is crammed with Iceland fans wearing horned helmets and blue national team jerseys. Former Iceland international turned sports journalist Guðmundur Benediktsson is standing at the front with a flipchart open, furiously drawing lines and numbers to show where the Croatian players are likely to run. The supporters politely raise their hands to ask questions about tactics and formations:
What will be the Croatia team?
They haven’t told us yet.
Will it rain?
We don’t know.
Who is Luka Modrić?
Er ...
Benediktsson is momentarily thrown by the question. It isn’t a normal football crowd. The match has become a thing of national pride regardless of whether or not you like or know anything about the game. ‘I was first of all announcing the starting line of the Iceland team and maybe the probable line of the Croatia team,’ Benediktsson explains after his one-man show holding the crowd. ‘But mostly I was telling them about a meeting with the national coach explaining what the Croatian team does a lot so I was just explaining to them what to expect today.’ It would be unthinkable for a national team coach to hand out the team’s starting line-up and formation days before the match to keep the fans informed. Unthinkable anywhere but Iceland. The team still retains its rapport with its supporters, even as they come close to making history. ‘I played my games between 1994 and 2001 but it was nothing like this, nothing like this,’ he says of the atmosphere that has surrounded not just the team but the country since the team’s incredible run. Benediktsson had played for Iceland in the 1990s, a different age, when virtually all the players were amateur and Iceland was one of the very worst teams in Europe. He was a student back then when he played for the national team but defeat hadn’t dimmed the experience. ‘I didn’t have a low point with my time,’ he says. ‘We didn’t win many games. But at that time it didn’t matter. It was just the honour of representing the national team.’
Iceland’s Cinderella run isn’t quite the same as the United Arab Emirates making it to Italia ’90, or the Zaire team in 1974. They weren’t unknown amateurs who had taken holidays from their jobs as policemen or civil servants to shine briefly and brightly before fading into obscurity. They hadn’t overcome a war or a revolution. Iceland was a triumph of playing the professional game better than anyone else. Money had helped to build the facilities that any country would envy. Yet their run still mattered, and it still proved that, given the right conditions, anybody still has a chance of qualifying for a World Cup finals. Without that hope, the international game would wither and die.
More than 1,500 Iceland fans had made it to Zagreb, over 0.5 per cent of the population this time around. Here, too, was Arni, the huge bearded man in a Superman onesie who had cried on my shoulder after the Norway game. They all believed, and the rest of the world hoped, that Iceland could give the World Cup some of the magic only the underdog can bring. The Croatian team were the exception. ‘I am aware they have high expectations, full of enthusiasm, but to be honest, I have no idea where their optimism comes from,’ striker Ivica Olić said before the game. ‘We are a better team, we will score more than once and we will win and go to Brazil.’ Benediktsson was not impressed. ‘I don’t think this Croatia team is as good as the team of Prosinečki and Šuker. I don’t think they are a better team than us,’ he says as the army of blue shirts with horned helmets head to the Maksimir for Iceland’s last shot at Brazil. ‘We have been saying, the whole nation has been saying: “When will it stop, when will it stop, it must stop now.” But it hasn’t. It’s still going on. Why not? Why not?’
**
The match begins as everyone expects it to. Croatia attack from the start, punishing Iceland’s every loose pass. For the first half an hour they grimly hold on. At one point they even have the ball in Croatia’s net but it is ruled offside. Just as it seems that Iceland might hold on until half-time, Bayern Munich striker Mario Mandžukić arrives at the far post and rattles a deflected pass into the net. The goal shouldn’t make much difference for Iceland. They are away from home and away goals count double. If they score they will still qualify. But they are a shadow of the team that came back against Switzerland when 4-1 down, or even the team that held Croatia 0-0 a few days ago. Maybe it is the tiredness of playing with ten men for forty-five minutes in Reykjavik, or the absence of Kolbeinn Sigþórsson. Guðjohnsen has barely touched the ball. Maybe the occasion and the pressure have simply become too much.
Even though they have played badly, they are handed a route back into the game when Mandžukić crazily stamps down on Jóhann Guðmundsson’s thigh near the halfway line and is shown a straight red. Yet, even against ten men, Iceland can’t string a pass together. Just a few minutes into the second half Croatia kill Iceland’s dream. Their captain Darijo Srna collects a pass on the right and fires the ball into the bottom left-hand corner. Croatia, it turns out, play better with ten men. Goalkeeper Hannes Halldórsson was right when he predicted he would have a busy night, and makes a string of fine saves to prevent a whitewash. As the minutes tick down, and the Croatia fans sing louder as the ninety minute mark approaches, the life drains from the Iceland team. The full-time whistle is a relief.
The Croatian players run on to the pitch as the Iceland team lie on the deck. After all the controversies and ghosts of the Yugoslav civil war Croatia have at last fulfil
led their promise. But there is to be one more moment of madness. Josip Šimunić grabs the stadium announcer’s cordless microphone, turns it on and runs across the pitch towards the still celebrating crowd. ‘For the homeland!’ he shouts. ‘Ready!’ the fans shout back. The chant is that of the fascist pro-Nazi Ustaše regime that brutally ran Croatia during the Second World War. Šimunić claims it is was simply an innocent expression of love for his country. FIFA slap him with a ten-match ban for stoking religious or ethnic hatred. Šimunić’s World Cup is over, even if he doesn’t know it yet.
The Iceland team are devastated. That night, live on Icelandic national television, Eiður Guðjohnsen will break down in tears as he announces his international retirement. ‘Nobody said anything in the dressing room, we all definitely thought we were going through,’ Halldórsson says outside the stadium after the game. The Iceland bus is waiting with its engine on as the rain begins to fall again. The players can’t bring themselves to board it. ‘This was the worst game we played in the competition,’ he says, staring at the floor. ‘I don’t have an explanation. Now all I see is disappointment. Maybe some hope will come later. But this was a once in a lifetime experience for most of these players.’ He will go back to Iceland, he says, and work on his horror film.
Thirty-One Nil Page 33