FIFA: “No Olympics For You, Iraq Soccer Team!”
FIFA Suspends Iraq
By Jeff Z. Klein - NYTimes:
FIFA announced today that it has suspended Iraq from all international soccer competitions for one year after last week’s decision by the Iraqi government to dissolve its national Olympic committee. Iraq was already facing a suspension from the International Olympic Committee that could prevent its athletes from going to Beijing.
As Stephen Farrell and other Times employees in Iraq report, the Iraq soccer team learned of the suspension immediately after a friendly match with Thailand on Monday. The team, the sole unifying element in a country riven by war and ceaseless ethnic violence, won the hearts of fans in Iraq and around the world by winning the Asian Cup last July, as chronicled in these posts from the Times soccer blog.
The Iraq team is out of the 2008 Olympic tournament, having finished just behind Australia in the final qualifying group. But the FIFA suspension does affect Iraq’s qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup tournament.
Meanwhile, the very relevance of an Olympic soccer tournament has been called into question by one of the sport’s most prominent commentators, Brian Homewood, the Reuters soccer correspendent based in South America. Pointing out that the international soccer calendar is filled annually with summertime competitions (this year the European Nations Championship in June is the big show in world football, not the Olympics), Homewood asks “Is there a place for soccer at the Olympics?” and answers, sort of, “Many people wonder whether the sport really ought to have a place at the Olympics at all.”
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Brian Homewood is correct.
Its called the World Cup.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:10 amReal football starts in August. Go Cowgirls.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:20 amPeople have been wanting the US to boycott the Olympics because of China’s behavior, this is our chance to do it and score some big points for our troops. We boycott “in protest of Iraq’s exclusion”(
) and we can say its all about fairness to our friends and allies in the GWOT….
May 27th, 2008 at 1:13 pm