Paddy Agnew/World Scene Did you hear about the national team coach who had to pack up his bags and abandon the job because all his players had been summoned for military service?

We are talking about 54-year-old, former East German coach Bernd Stange, the man who last November signed a four-year contract as coach to the Iraqi national team.

Stange's motives for travelling to Baghdad are not that difficult to fathom.

In a frank moment last November, he admitted that one reason he had accepted the job was because, in truth, he had not received too many other offers.

When he arrived in Baghdad, he found himself negotiating his contract with the president of the Iraqi Football Association, one Udai Saddam Hussein, son of the Iraqi dictator.

When Stange finally accepted last month that his short-lived tenure of the Iraqi job was, at least temporarily, over, he told reporters: "There's no sense in staying. I wouldn't even have players to coach because they'll be called up in readiness for the war."

In his time in Iraq, Stange was able to get some sense of the wretched state, not only of Iraqi football, but also of Iraqi life.

Driven around in an old US Oldsmobile by an Iraqi driver (doubtless a secret service agent) assigned to him by the football association, Stange managed to visit all 20 Iraqi first division clubs.

Given his East German background (he once controversially admitted to having been an informer for the infamous Stasi, the East German secret police), the fact that all the clubs are in some way controlled by the Iraqi regime probably did not surprise him.

Top of the table clashes in Iraq feature sides such as The Police Force v The Foreign Ministry, or The University XI v The Defence Ministry (the latter will presumably soon have more serious defensive problems).

Nor can one can be much surprised to hear Stange claim that Iraqi football facilities are a disaster: uneven, lumpy pitches with little if any grass are the order of the day, while basic sports equipment such as the bandages and oil-rubs used by team medics have been hit by UN embargoes.

Even the goalposts have run foul of the embargoes, with Iraq having to make do with old-fashioned, heavy iron goalposts instead of modern aluminium ones, as aluminium is rated as a potential armament.

It would be nice to think that Bernd Stange will one day soon maintain his promise and return to coach football in Iraq.

As someone who coached both the East German national team for five years (1983-1988) and also important East German club sides such as Carl Zeiss Jena and Hertha Berlin, he might well be able to teach the Iraqis a thing or two about football.

The pity is that the Iraqis are likely to have other things on their minds over the coming weeks.