Football is one of the few sports that throws military and political rivals on to a pitch and lets them at it, writes Shane Hegarty
In 2001 a Swedish politician, Lars Gustafson, had the bright idea of nominating soccer for the Nobel Peace Prize. The game fosters world peace, he argued. The world laughed at the idea; the Nobel committee ignored it. It gave the prize instead to the UN and Kofi Annan, perhaps proving after all that it could be won by a squabbling team that was losing touch with its supporters.
Yet, the World Cup remains one of the few sporting events that throw military and political rivals on to a pitch and lets them at it. Every draw throws up a mix of the inconvenient, the incendiary and the intriguing. It is a tournament that has pitched East and West Germany against each other (East winning 1-0 in 1974) and Iran versus The Great Satan (the US losing 2-1). It has been credited with one war, when a 1970 World Cup qualification match between El Salvador and Honduras proved the tipping point in tensions and led to a six-day conflict that killed thousands.
The game's world organising body, FIFA, has 205 members and while it is not the biggest such organisation (the world volleyball body, FIVB, has 218 members) its numbers mean it beats the UN on that score at least.
For this World Cup campaign, international teams have been visiting Afghanistan to play in a stadium that previously hosted public executions. Meanwhile, in an Asian qualifying group, North Korea props up the table behind Bahrain, Iran and Japan. It returned to the competition spurred by envy at South Korea's success in the 2002 finals. They have yet to be drawn against their rivals, as the respective youth teams were in 1991, but 3,500 police were present when Japan hosted the team, following revelations that the reclusive communist state had kidnapped Japanese people during the Cold War.
THE REPUBLIC OF Ireland has also been handed piquant ties, most notably when drawn against Northern Ireland in a qualifying group for the 1994 World Cup. The Belfast fixture was played in the aftermath of the Shankill Road bombing and the Greysteel shooting, but FIFA refused to switch the venue. On the eve of the game the Republic side trained at Windsor Park as teenagers stood behind the barbed wire and mimed machine-gunning the players. The next night, the team bus arrived at the stadium with armed guards on board and the lights off. The match was played in a poisonous atmosphere in which the few brave southerners who ventured up had to feign disgust when the Republic scored, when all they wanted to do was explode with delight.
The break-up of the old USSR has offered Irish players and fans a noteworthy stamp on the passport, such as Georgia, whom we played in the Euro 2004 qualifiers when it was known everywhere but on its tourist leaflets as "the kidnap capital of the world".
By then, a 2002 World Cup play-off had brought the team to Tehran. Aside from the problem of Irish fans descending on a country in which alcohol is banned, the FAI had to lobby the Iranians to allow Irish women become the first at a football match since the Islamic revolution. A handful were given permission only if they would wear hijab veils at all times. It turned out that a decent proportion of those women were journalists, who then returned with oddly diverging stories of either widespread abuse or surprising conviviality.
There are some teams the Irish will not have to face. There will be no long-haul flights to Greenland, for instance, which has yet to join FIFA. Meanwhile, the select few not playing in the World Cup include Djibouti, Cambodia, Philippines and Burma (Myanmar), which is excluded because it refused to play a match against Iran in 2002.
THAT MIDDLE-EASTERN Israel is in the European qualifying pool in the first place is, of course, a result of its neighbours' antipathy. At the height of the intifada in 2001, the national team's home matches were transferred to Cyprus because of security fears. And that year, several frightened Chelsea players refused to travel to a club match in Tel Aviv. However, football is also seen as one of the few things that allow Arab and Jew to meet on equal terms, and sometimes to play together.
Despite the Israelis' delight at once again hosting matches, there are some who would prefer not to show it.
"The sporting ethos in Israel is a disgrace," complained a columnist with Israeli paper Ha'aretz this week. "Who ever heard of a nation that is hosting an important international soccer match welcoming the opposing team's fans? . . . Can you imagine Roy Keane sharing a drink with Israeli fans at The Brazen Head? But here in Israel, we're so hung up on how others see us that we fail to see how our obsequiousness is self-defeating."
He will win no Nobel prizes with that attitude.
