Iraq's Journey to the World Cup: A Historic Playoff Victory

The bus journeys came first. Long, punishing slogs across a country still bearing the scars of war. Eight hours from scattered cities to Baghdad, then roughly 15 more on broken roads to Amman. Only then, with the squad finally together, could Iraq even think about boarding a plane.

All this for one match.

In Monterrey, Mexico, 40 years of waiting and an entire nation’s frayed patience came to rest on a World Cup playoff against Bolivia. The route there bordered on the absurd: a nine‑hour delay to a Fifa‑arranged charter, an eight‑hour haul to Lisbon, a two‑hour stopover, then 12 hours to Mexico. Somewhere between the turbulence and the time zones, Iraq had to prepare for what René Meulensteen calls “the most important game in their lives”.

They arrived exhausted, but on time. And crucially, ready.

A journey like no other

Meulensteen, assistant to head coach Graham Arnold and once a key lieutenant to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, watched players and staff drag themselves across borders simply to make the squad rendezvous.

“They had to travel from different cities to Baghdad by car or bus,” he recalls. “Some of those journeys took up to eight hours.” From there, it was the 15‑hour grind to Amman, the only realistic escape route with Iraq’s airspace closed and the Middle East war raging. Asian‑based players flew themselves into Jordan just to be part of the group flight.

By the time they reached Mexico, Iraq had already lived a qualifying campaign like no other. Twenty matches played. A country in turmoil. A team that refused to give in.

The payoff came in Monterrey. Iraq beat Bolivia 2-1 to claim the final ticket to the World Cup, their first appearance on the biggest stage since 1986. The stadium felt oddly familiar, even welcoming. Local Mexicans, handed the remaining tickets, turned out in big numbers and blended with a sizeable Iraqi diaspora from the United States. The underdogs were not alone.

“All the remaining tickets were given to local Mexicans, so they were there in a big number, together with a large group of Iraqis based in the US,” Meulensteen says. The noise carried a sense of occasion. So did the setting.

Full circle in Mexico

For Iraq, Mexico is not just another host country. It is the place where their only previous World Cup adventure unfolded. Meulensteen and Arnold knew that symbolism mattered.

“We told the players: ‘Let’s realise what kind of journey we’ve had to get here and perhaps the match is meant to be here, as Iraq’s previous World Cup participation was staged in Mexico.’”

The message landed. This was not just a playoff. It was a loop closing.

Back in Baghdad, the reaction was instant and ferocious. Celebrations erupted in the early morning darkness as videos pinged their way to Meulensteen’s phone. Fireworks, flags, people flooding the streets.

“It was absolute madness in Baghdad,” he says. “The whole nation has been craving something to celebrate and this gives people a huge boost of energy and hope. You can really feel the sense of pride; there’s a genuine feelgood factor.”

Iraq has been here before, in its own way. Football has repeatedly cut through the gloom. Fourth place at the 2004 Olympics, when they beat Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal. The 2007 Asian Cup triumph that briefly united a country in the grip of civil war. Even the 1986 World Cup itself, staged against the backdrop of conflict.

“Iraq is still a country that is really feeling the aftereffects of the second Gulf war,” Meulensteen says. “You can see that in the cities. They are recovering, but logistically and organisationally you can’t compare it to Dubai or places in Saudi Arabia.”

And yet, amid the difficulty, there is joy. Meulensteen, now 62, has grown fond of the daily life around this squad.

“You should hear them on the bus to training and matches, singing and listening to music. It’s absolutely brilliant.”

The toughest draw, the same old odds

Brilliance will be required in industrial quantities at the World Cup. Iraq have landed in arguably the most brutal group of the lot: France, Senegal and Norway. On paper, it is a mismatch.

“It’s like Manchester United against Grimsby,” Meulensteen says, reaching for a comparison that underlines the gulf. But he knows how that story ended. Grimsby won that tie in the EFL Cup last August. The gap between giant and underdog is never as wide as it looks from the outside.

Meulensteen and Arnold have walked this road before. With Australia at the last World Cup, they were dropped into a pool with France, Denmark and Tunisia and handed the usual polite dismissal. They responded by beating Denmark and Tunisia and giving Argentina a serious contest in the last 16.

“We had France, Denmark and Tunisia in our group and weren’t given much chance of going through either,” Meulensteen says. “But that’s where our biggest strength lies: the element of surprise.”

He will lean on that again. So will a squad stitched together from players born in Iraq and others with Iraqi heritage spread around the world. Not all of them speak Arabic. Meulensteen does, to an intermediate level, a legacy of his early coaching years in Qatar in the 1990s.

To take that job in 1993, he had to marry his girlfriend; living together unmarried was not permitted. It was an early lesson in how culture shapes football, and one that still informs his work now.

From Carrington to Baghdad

Meulensteen’s route to Iraq runs straight through one of the most successful club sides in history. He joined Manchester United in 2001, brought in via academy director Lee Kershaw and on the strength of a recommendation from Dave Mackay, who had met him while managing Qatar’s under‑17s.

He started in the academy, then moved into individual work with first‑team players. After a short spell as head coach at Brøndby, he returned to Old Trafford in a more senior capacity. By 2007, his role with Cristiano Ronaldo had intensified.

“I had several sessions with him on and off the pitch, using videos to show certain things,” Meulensteen says. He broke down finishing into details: dividing the penalty area into zones, understanding the types of crosses, choosing the right finish for each situation.

The aim was clear: sharpen the edges, cut out the waste.

He urged Ronaldo to lean less on pure showmanship and more on impact. “I told him it’s all about being as unpredictable as possible, varying your game … Over the years, he mastered that perfectly.”

What struck Meulensteen most was Ronaldo’s obsession with improvement. At Carrington, the Portuguese forward would often slip into a fenced cage with rebound boards after training, staying for another 10 or 15 minutes. Meulensteen designed drills using those boards to challenge his touch and creativity. Ronaldo embraced every one.

All the work from that season – sessions, video clips, tactical notes – ended up on a DVD Meulensteen compiled for him, essentially a PowerPoint presentation with footage and a lesson on goal‑setting. The core idea was simple: players with clear targets outperform those without them.

At the start of the 2007‑08 season, Meulensteen asked Ronaldo for his goal tally aim after a 23‑goal campaign. Ronaldo said 30. Meulensteen pushed him to 40. Ronaldo agreed. He finished with 42, and United lifted both the Premier League and the Champions League.

Ferguson’s four words

In the summer of 2008, Meulensteen stepped up again, promoted to first‑team coach and handed the keys to training by Ferguson. The manager distilled his entire footballing philosophy onto three sheets of flipchart paper.

“It covered principles both defensively and in possession,” Meulensteen says. The third sheet, though, carried the essence of Manchester United in that era. Ferguson wanted his team to attack with “pace, power, penetration and unpredictability”. Those four words became the compass for every session.

“When you look back, during the period when we were at our best, you could see all those elements.”

After leaving United in 2013, Meulensteen’s career turned into a tour of football’s outer edges: Fulham, the United States, Israel, India, then a return to the World Cup stage with Australia. Each stop added another layer to his understanding of players, pressure and doubt.

When fear creeps in, he asks his players to give it a shape. Name it. Is it the fear of losing? Of the consequences of failure? He reminds them that thoughts cannot always be controlled, but focus can. Fix your mind on what you want: to play well, to score, to reach the World Cup. Add to your game; don’t rip it up.

Words matter. Ferguson drilled that into him. “He always said the two most important coaching words are: well done,” Meulensteen recalls. As training wound down at Carrington, Ferguson would often stroll past, tap him on the shoulder and offer exactly that.

The bond between them grew far beyond the touchline. Ferguson, he says, is a relentless reader, fascinated by politics and history, particularly the American civil war. He is equally at ease talking about films and actors as he is about formations and substitutions.

On away trips with United, they would sit on the bus or train and play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on Meulensteen’s iPad, often going all the way to the final question. “He knew things I would have never known.”

They still meet occasionally for tea, two hours vanishing in a blur of stories and memories. For Meulensteen, United was a “beautiful period” of his life.

Now, another chapter waits. The roads are rougher, the odds longer, the stakes somehow even higher. In Iraq’s dugout this summer, the same coach who once fine‑tuned Ronaldo and helped shape Ferguson’s great United sides will walk out to face France, Senegal and Norway.

He has the underdog again. He has the element of surprise. What more could he want?