The child was Esmir Bajraktarevic and the name on the top was Dzeko, belonging to a man who had just won the German league with Wolfsburg and was fast making a name for himself.

“He was probably the first player that I ever knew about, because since I was little, since I could walk, my parents were getting me his jersey,” says Bajraktarevic.

“I would say he was an idol for me, just the way that he led our country for so many years and he put that on his back.

“I think the whole country knows he’s a legend for this team and for the country. It’s undeniable.”

Bajraktarevic’s parents had left the haunted town of Srebrenica where 8,000 Bosnian males of fighting age were massacred by the Serbian army during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

But they didn’t let young Esmir forget his roots, as he grew up in peaceful, safe America.

“I speak Bosnian with my parents. I speak Bosnian with my family and almost all my family, all my cousins, still live in Bosnia. So I still feel a really deep connection there,” he says.

“growing up my whole life, I saw myself as Bosnian and I think the people around me as well in America saw me as a Bosnian kid.”

Now, Bajraktarevic is back in north America, this time to play in Bosnia’s second World Cup.

He’s 21, Dzeko – Edin Dzeko – is 40, yet they’re in the same team.

“I think it was two years ago in my first camp,” says Bajraktarevic of his first meeting with Dzeko.

“I just saw him in the lobby before the first training session. Him and (Sead) Kolašinac came up to me and just treated me normally.

“It was crazy at first, but I got used to it after a little bit. But it was definitely a surreal moment.”

But who made the first move and said hello?

“He came up to me. It was a little crazy. It was just like, ‘hey, what’s up’? And then we got on the bus and went to training.”

Then, a couple of days later, with Bosnia trailing the Netherlands, Bajraktarevic came on as a substitute and set up his hero for a goal.

“That was also crazy,” he remembers. “It was my first touch on the ball. I just knew I wanted to make an impact because we were losing in the game. I just crossed it to him and it went in.”

That moment was memorable but what Bajraktarevic did in March has gone down in history.

Bosnia had missed out on direct qualification for the World Cup, finishing just two points behind Austria in their group.

But the beauty of this bloated tournament is that there’s always another chance and theirs eventually came in a playoff against Italy at home, in Zeneca.

Italy, four-times world champions who hadn’t graced the tournament since 2014, took an early lead but went down to ten men before half time when Alessandro Bastoni was sent off.

They held out until 11 minutes from time when Haris Tabaković equalised, but Bosnia could not find another goal against the ten men in extra-time and so it went to penalties.

Italy scored their first but, perhaps weighed down by the fear of missing a third World Cup, missed the next two while Bosnia scored all of theirs.

So it came down to the kick that, if it went in, would seal qualification and it fell to 20-year-old Esmir Bajraktarevic.

“When the moment came, I had the feeling like, this is it. I just knew that if I hit it well in the corner, it would go in.”

Many players with far more experience might have frozen with destiny resting in their hands but not Bajraktarevic, whose natural confidence was clear during our interview and there, on the Zeneca pitch.

“I think I’ve always been like that since I was young, and I think it shows in my play style as well, that I’m brave and I like to be myself on the field. That was another example of it.

“It took me a couple of seconds I think when I scored, and then I knew that we were going to the World Cup. It was an incredible feeling. Something I’ll never forget.”

So after taking his nation to the greatest show on earth, how does it feel actually to be there?

“Yeah, it’s a special feeling. Obviously it’s the world stage. Everybody’s watching. It’s the biggest tournament in the world.”

At this point, many players would continue to gush with excitement and awe. But not Bajraktarevic.

“But I don’t think I’m going to treat it any differently. At the end of the day, it’s just football, so there’s not really much else to think about.”

He and his friends had got the kick off time wrong and were rushing to catch up as all around them, Port Elizabeth went mad.

“I can remember like it was yesterday,” says Williams who is now South Africa’s captain and goalkeeper.

“Myself and a few friends were actually crossing the local soccer field on our way to watch at one of our friend’s place when we heard so much noise. Cars were going off and there was a lot of screaming going on, so we started running.

In a weird quirk of fate, South Africa and Mexico are playing a return match of sorts, as they open the 2026 World Cup, this time at the iconic Azteca stadium in Mexico City.

“It’s a very special thing for us in Mexico to have a new World Cup, the third time in our history,” says former Mexico international Joaquin Beltran.

“We have three stadiums, three cities - Monterrey, Guadalajara and Mexico City - ready to receive the people of Colombia, Uzbekistan, Korea, South Africa.

“Everyone is talking about the thirteen games we will host. So it’s a very special time for us.”

The scandalously high cost of match tickets has priced many genuine Mexican football fans out of matches.

But the hope is that a buzz can develop in the nation as it did in South Africa 16 years ago.

“The energy was amazing,” recalls Williams. “It brought so much intensity into the country.

“Seeing all these superstars on our home soil, it just changed my view of football,” he says.

But more significantly for Williams, these experiences may have jolted him back to the path that will lead to the Azteca.

“At that moment, I didn’t want to play football anymore because I just lost my brother two months prior. That just gave me new energy to keep going again.”

Now, he says, it’s time to pay that inspiration forward.

“That was one of the key elements that we discussed as a team, especially with this generation and especially with what’s going on in society right now where people are so negative.

“We wanted to give them something to hold on to, to fight for, to dream for. This can hopefully inspire them to see 26 of their countrymen playing on the biggest sporting event and push them to dream even bigger.”

Perhaps young Mexicans will be inspired by their prodigious starlet, Gilberto Mora.

He is 17, the youngest player at the World Cup, and has taken the nation by storm ever since scoring three goals as a 16-year-old at last year’s Under-20 World Cup.

“He plays in the stadium like he was playing in the street with his friends,” says Joaquin Beltran.

“I don’t know if he will start the games in the World Cup, but I think the minutes he will have, he will make a difference because he can do things that other players don’t.”

For Williams, though his big brother Marvin may have gone, in a way he remains with him.

“When I go into penalty shootouts, I try and have a conversation with my late brother. So I’m just telling him to show me which way to go,” says the keeper who is famous for making four saves in a shoot-out during the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

“I just try and be positive, remain calm, and I’ve got a guardian angel always looking over me. So I’m in conversation with him.

“My brother, he’s probably the one person who believed so much in me. I know that he’s looking down, proud of the man I have become and the player that I have become.”

So will there be a conversation at Azteca today?

“Definitely. He had big dreams for me. He always hoped that I was going to be part of the 2010 World Cup.

“So 100 percent definitely I’ll be dedicating the match to him, will be chatting to him throughout the game.”

And what will he say to Marvin?

“We’ve made it. We’ve made it.”

Less than a fortnight earlier, he was in charge of the national team in a 1-0 defeat to Turkiye in a World Cup qualifier.

13 days later, the nation’s greatest ever player, Gheorghe Hagi, was named as his successor.

As a player, Hagi was a maverick with a left foot that could open clams. His Romania debut, at the age of 18, was handed to him by Lucescu in 1983 and, 43 years later, Hagi’s son Ianis turned out to be Lucescu’s final captain.

As a coach, Hagi has flitted between clubs, in the main never settling long enough to have a positive impact.

This is his second stint in charge of the national team, after a short-lived, four-game spell 25 years ago.

By contrast, Mircea Lucescu, whose first name is pronounced “mircha”, won 35 medals in five countries during his 47-year coaching career.

Only Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola have more trophies as coaches.

In truth, this piece is about him. I started writing it after he died, but professional and personal responsibilities prevented me from finishing it in good time.

In 2021, after he had guided Dynamo Kyiv to the Ukrainian title, I had the great fortune to interview Lucescu and found him to be a man who just loved to talk about football.

To my lasting regret, I cannot find the raw audio, but I have embedded the edited version that was broadcast on the World Football programme, which I presented at the time.

We must have spoken for an hour and a half about Dynamo success, why football was so strong during Communism, and his penchant for coaching both clubs on opposite sides of a bitter divide: Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk, Galatasaray and Besiktas, Dinamo and Rapid Bucharest.

“I love rivalry. I love this kind of pressure. I love this kind of stress,” he told me passionately.

“I can’t live on ordinary. I love to be there. It’s so competitive. it’s real football.”

He was 75 then, and in no mood to tolerate the thought that he was too old to coach, citing research by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018.

“They are saying that the more productive period, especially with men, is between 60-70,” he said defiantly.

“The big multinational companies, their Presidents, are between 60-70. They say the second is between 70-80 and third is between 50-60.

For Lucescu, being a title-winner in his 70s was not as important as being a role model for his peers.

“I felt that I represent important group of the persons with the age more than seventy years,” he explained.

“it’s so important that people know that the life continues and they can be extremely productive.

“You can take decisions without pressure, without thinking that you can make mistakes because you passed many, many times in these situations and you took decision wrong and good.”

That Ukrainian championship was to be Lucescu’s penultimate and it came at the rivals of Shakhtar Donetsk, where he had won 22 trophies in 12 years.

For that reason, and the fact that in his opinion Russia and Ukraine were the same, both part of a wider Soviet Union, the hardcore Dynamo fans, known as Ultras, had described his appointment as ‘a spit in the face’.

“After I’ve seen the opposition of the Ultras and the situation, I said, president, if they don’t agree with me, I renounce (my position),” he said.

“My son, Razvan, said to me, ‘Papa you cannot renounce. You have to continue. Your prestige is your history. You promised them, you signed the contract, you have to continue.”

So he did, but he slept at the Dynamo training ground rather than a hotel, to avoid potential confrontations with the hardcore fans.

“They wanted to be protagonists,” he claimed.

“It’s not ultras everywhere in the world, but they try to be much more important than the players and the coaches and all the other supporters.”

Lucescu gave his final interview to his compatriot, journalist Emanuel Rosu, before the game against Turkiye. The defiance and passion that had marked his life continued to burn despite failing health that had caused regular trips to hospital.

“I’m not in my best shape so I would have stepped away if there was another option available. But I insist: I can’t leave like a coward,” he told Rosu.

A few days after the Turkiye defeat, According to Romanian outlet Fanatik, Lucescu suddenly became unresponsive and collapsed in front of his players in a team meeting.

He told the Romanian outlet Golazo, “I felt I couldn’t breathe, then I lost consciousness. I am OK now. I got mad after watching a replay of the match vs Turkiye. Some unbelievable errors cost us qualification in Istanbul.”

In the ambulance en route to the hospital, he reportedly told the paramedics that they would have made great strikers owing to the speed of their response.

Shortly after arriving at hospital, he asked to return to the national team training camp, so that he could take charge of a largely meaningless friendly against Slovakia the following day, and reportedly said he would discharge himself if he had to.

One of the doctors is quoted as saying that Lucescu told him, “I just want to die on the football pitch.”

But a heart attack while he was being monitored led to Lucescu being placed in an induced coma from which he never awoke.

As a player, Mircea Lucescu faced opponents who were born in the 1930s. As a coach, his final selection included players born in the 21^st century.

30 years on, an independent Kosovo is one game away from qualification for the greatest show on earth.

“To be in this position, seeing all the difficulties we had, it’s incredible to have this feeling now to be so close to the World Cup,” says Anel Rashkaj, Kosovo’s first-ever captain.

Rashkaj’s family was among thousands who fled Kosovo when the 1999 war broke out with Serbia-dominated Yugoslavia.

They settled in Sweden where Anel grew up to be a promising footballer.

Not long after he signed his first professional contract with Halmstads, Kosovo declared independence and with that came the prospect of a their own national team.

“I was 17 or 18 and my dream was to play for the national team, after coming from a war,” he told me.

“So when I see that the first steps were taken, the team are trying to organize games in Europe against clubs - not national teams but clubs- I called directly and I said, ‘I’m in’.”

Kosovo may well have had a team but it was unrecognised by football’s authorities, meaning that it could not face national teams.

“We had to fight with our clubs to play because they said, ‘it’s not a national team’.”

And there were other hardships.

“We didn’t have money to organize camps and hotels. All of these things was arranged by Kosovo people that live in Europe.

It took another six years for Kosovo to be allowed to play officially recognised matches and Haiti were their first opponents in March 2014.

But while the 0-0 scoreline does not say much, the day was full of excitement.

There was a 12-hour build-up programme to the match on Kosovar tv and those who weren’t watching, went out.

“The streets were full of people. Women, elders and kids,” remembers Rashkaj.

“The coach was seeing the sacrifice that maybe I did in the beginning. I was maybe the first one that said yes to the national team, And I get to be the captain in this first official game.”

Two years later, on a rainy day in Mexico City, I was covering the Fifa congress at which Kosovo were received their membership.

They lost nine of their first 10 games after than but within a decade, they know that if they beat Turkiye in Pristina, they will be at the World Cup.

That is a tough ask, even with home advantage. Turkiye are above Kosovo in the Fifa rankings and boast a fine crop of young players.

They haven’t been to the World Cup for 24 years, when they finished third.

But Rashkaj has confidence in Kosovo’s team.

“Every position is a very good player playing in very good leagues.

“We always had very skilful players individually all over Europe. But we had a little bit problems, to go the whole way to the World Cup or to European Cup,” says Rashkaj, ironically from Turkiye where he was coaching Kosovo’s under-19s.

“We had a little bit lack of team play, to be tactically smart and try to get the results.

“We have a coach that also saw that we need defensively to be more compact and more aggressively play like a team. Then, when we have our opportunities, we know that we have skilful individual offensive players and take our chances when they come.”

Their coach for the last two years has been the 59-year-old German, Franco Foda, who has seen new players come into the squad from Germany.

(Albian) Hajdari and (Fisnik) Asllani from Hoffenheim, and Leon Abdullahu. These three players are from Bundesliga that fill these gaps that we had in the team,” says Rashkaj.”

After Thursday’s thrilling 4-3 win against Slovakia – a nation that doesn’t recognise Kosovo – the team was given half a million Euros.

It will be one million if they qualify, and a luxury apartment for the winning goalscorer.

That might be captain Vedat Muriqi, a 31-year-old who is currently the second-highest scorer in La Liga.

“Also, we have so much history behind us that these players are playing not only with the skills, but also the emotions because it means so much for us. Not only for the national team, but for the whole country.

“The national team has given these people now this feeling that we are strong, that we can make a name in Europe.

“It makes us proud that people see that Kosovo people have a lot to contribute to the world.”

The early omens went in Kosovo’s favour, with Rashkaj’s under-19s beating Turkiye 3-1.

Today, he’s flying back to Pristina to be one of the 13,500 fans inside the Fadil Vokrri Stadium and if Kosovo win, he has his celebration all worked out.

“Hopefully, I can jump from the chair in the stadium and go into the pitch when the referee has blown the whistle. So I hope I can run to the players and Kosovo is in World Cup 2026.”

In his book, one chapter began when, as a three-year-old, he moved with his family from Zaire to England.

Another begins with him in adolescence, being asked simply by a scout if he would like to play for Manchester United, which he went on to do.

Later on, another writes the story of him choosing to play international football for the country of his birth, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, he has the chance to be in the team that returns to the World Cup after half a century.

They face Jamaica in the central Mexican city of Zapopan on Tuesday, which is 11,580 km from the Congolese capital Kinshasa.

It is the furthest that the national team of Zaire or DR Congo has ever travelled for a match.

For Tuanzebe, it is quite simply the biggest game of his life.

“For sure. Just what it holds, what lies behind it. Definitely the biggest game by a country mile,” he told me.

“This is beyond football. This is something that will change all our lives in terms of how we’re viewed in our own country, but also just putting it on the map.”

In 1974, Zaire and Haiti became the first “black nations” to play at the World Cup.

Zaire were the reigning African champions and impressed fans after their first game with their spirited attacking ambitions, despite losing 2-0 to Scotland.

Then came the news that the team’s budget, from which wages and bonuses would be drawn, had run out.

The extensive entourage traveling with the team, and living it up in West Germany, was blamed.

The players were persuaded not to quit the World Cup by FIFA, only for them to lose their next game 9-0 to Yugoslavia.

But the story got even worse.

Zaire’s military dictator, Marshal Mobutu, forced the team hotel to go into lockdown. He threatened that if they lost their last match against world champions Brazil 4-0 or worse, the players would not be allowed back into the country.

Brazil were 2-0 up when they got a free kick midway through the Zaire half. But before anyone could take it, Mwepu Ilunga raced out of the Zaire penalty area and booted it away.

He was booked and, after the game ended 3-0, Zaire went home with European sniggers about Naïve Africans ignorant of the rules ringing in their ears.

Now, the current generation of native Congolese and dual nations have a chance to set the record straight against a Jamaica side who laboured in their 1-0 win against lowly New Caledonia in their play-off semi-final last week.

“Nothing’s guaranteed, so I don’t think it’s wise to think the game is banked,” says Tuanzebe in his rich, baritone voice.

“Yes, we are the higher ranked team, but they still have very talented players.

“I haven’t come across a team where, if you’re playing for something of importance, it’s an easy game.”

When Tuanzebe moved to England, neither he nor any of his family could speak English.

“We all learned at our own pace. For my parents, if you need work, you learn the language,” says the Burnley defender.

And while English was mastered, it did not shove out the native language, as is so often the case in immigrant homes.

“We speak Lingala, which is one of the five main languages in Congo,” he says.

“(West Ham’s) Aaron Wan-Bissaka, who only understands and doesn’t speak too fluently, sometimes he has a language barrier with some other players. But for me, it’s very easy and sometimes I’m the bridge for him to communicate with them.

“My culture, my beliefs, what we have in the household is still very much Congolese. We just pick up on certain traits, certain mannerisms that are English.

“How I am with my family and the food we eat, the languages we speak. For me, I’m definitely a Congolese man.”

Tuanzebe’s debut for the national team came in June 2024 in a home game against Senegal.

The experience was a heady emotional mixture of meeting long-lost relatives, and being confronted by the fierce African football passion.

“The games over there are just on a different level, especially home games,” he recalls.

“I think kick off was five PM, the stadium was full by nine AM. Completely full.

“It was just scenes that you never really experience in Europe. And you just realize how influential football is and what it means to people. You have the nation behind you and it’s really emotional.”

DR Congo could become the tenth African nation in the World Cup. Seeing the bigger picture, Tuanzebe regards this as the chance to convince players in Europe who qualify to play for African nations that it is a safe bet.

“You see so many players in Europe who have African descent choose European national teams because you have better structure, better opportunities, you play at a higher standard of football.

“But this World Cup is hosting the most African countries it’s had, so you can just start encouraging more players to start playing for their country of origin,” says the 28-year-old.

“You look at the French national team now, the amount of African descent players that are playing in that team, it’s frightening really.

“These African players, they’ve had their upbringings in European countries, but it would level out the playing field for sure.”

In the immediate future, it is the 120 million Congolese in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest country and Tuanzebe’s dad who are mostly on his mind, as he chases history.

“This is a step to give him a little bit more joy and sort of a little bit more respect to the name of the country and for him to be proud and tell everyone he’s Congolese.

“He’ll be coming out to Mexico to watch this game. So the journey continues, and this is another chapter of it.”

In 2023, she made history as the first Palestinian to officiate at a World Cup, when she ran the line at the Women’s World Cup in Australia.

On Saturday, down under again, she will be one of the Assistants in the Women’s Asian Cup final.

“In Damascus, I knew about football because I had three brothers and I watched all the games,” she told me three years ago.

“I saw the training of referees there, but it was only male. I asked, why no women? They asked me if I would like to join and I said yes, of course. I want to be there. I started like this.”

Like many refugees, Saadieh has had a nomadic life, wandering from continent to continent in search of a place to call home. But she says the kindness of strangers has made that easier.

“When I was in Malaysia, people there were very kind. I felt like I am in my home. Also in Sweden, the same thing.

“In the beginning, of course, everything is difficult because this is a new country, culture and language. But after a few months, the people help me to feel like yes, this is my home.

“I have had a special experience in every place.”

Saadieh’s indefatigable pursuit of ‘better’ has also been fuelled and caused by football.

For so many of us, football has provided the key which unlocks so many doors to an otherwise unimaginable lifestyle, and Saadieh’s story is no different.

“Football is not only a game, it’s life,” she said.

“This has given me a great opportunity to see Europe, Asia, Africa and to meet people there, new cultures and traditions.

“It’s amazing to see how is life on the other side. Football give me a chance.”

And that chance has brought the opportunity to pay forward the kindnesses of strangers which have helped Saadieh.

She is now a role model for other refugees and Islamic females who might take inspiration from someone wearing a headscarf being respected for what she does and thriving in an environment clear of suspicion, where she belongs on the inside.

“I think this is a good message to all Islamic women, that nothing will stop you. Okay, we wear a scarf, but we can do what we want. We can do what we dream, and we will be there.

“I hope this is like a gate. I open it, and I hope many enter to this gate.”

Now, a politician has spoken out and it is the Minister for Sport and Youth, no less.

On Wednesday, Ahmad Donyamali said this on state TV:

“Given that this corrupt (American) government has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances do we have the appropriate conditions to participate in the World Cup.

“Our boys are not safe, and conditions for participation do not exist – taking into account the evil deeds of they have committed towards Iran.

“Over the past eight or nine months, two wars have been imposed on us, and several thousand of our people have been killed and martyred.

Therefore, we definitely do not have the possibility for participation.”

It is a decisive statement and, on the face of it, the clearest indication of what might happen.

However, there was nothing official about this. It was not a formal statement and the interview was not about the 2026 World Cup. He had not even been asked a question about it.

These words came at the end of an answer to a question about ‘Australian interference’, as the interviewer put it, after some players from the women’s team were offered humanitarian visas to live in Australia.

An article on the Asriran website a few hours later reported that there was surprise among senior government officials that Mr. Donyamali had made those comments, stressing that they were his personal views and not based on any kind of consensus.

Later in the day, the Iranian ambassador to Mexico expressed his personal view that Iran would support any proposal to move Team Melli’s games away from the United States.

Good luck to Fifa telling the fans of Egypt, New Zealand and Belgium that their flights, hotels and expensive match tickets for games against Iran in the United States have just become worthless.

Iran is a country at war. The internet blackout which began on February 28 continues, but some videos and social media posts have trickled out.

In one, someone said that the bombardment of Tehran was so severe that it would have been better to be dead than live through it. Another said that the bombing of an oil refinery had turned night into day, so bright were the flames.

Elsewhere, I saw a video of a café owner in Tehran saying that he had seen a person fall over on the pavement outside, without a head.

This is currently the Iranian context of flux, trauma, and survival.

At time of writing, the newly chosen Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, remains silent and unseen. It is difficult to know if anyone is making decisions about anything, other than where to point missiles and drones.

The World Cup will have to wait.

That happened at Mexico ‘86, still two years before the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraq’s “home games” were played in Kuwait, India and Saudi Arabia.

That’s still Iraq’s only World Cup appearance. But this month, they’re due to return to Mexico for a one-off qualification play-off against Suriname or Bolivia, for which they’re highly fancied.

Except that’s been placed in jeopardy by the war between USA-Israel and Iran.

Iraq’s national airline stopped flights after the missiles started flying and won’t resume for the foreseeable future.

There’s no Mexican embassy in Baghdad so travelling to embassies in Qatar or the United Arab Emirates to get visas has been impossible.

Ironically, Iraq’s Australian coach Graham Arnold is in Dubai, where he went the day before the outbreak of War, which forced him to hunker down since the shooting began, some of it within earshot.

“I was heading back to the airport with my wife. We were in Fujairah, close to the Persian Gulf, right opposite is Iran,” he told me from his hotel today.

”We heard a bomb go off at 8.45 in the morning. Obviously, we were across the Gulf from it but it was so loud. The taxi driver turned around and said ‘the airport’s been closed’.

“I’ve been in a very safe resort but a bomb went off, just up the road, about 750 metres away, the day after we arrived. The whole building shook, it was quite scary.”

When Arnold took over the national team in May 2025, Iraq were third in their group, outside the two direct qualification spots, with two games to go.

They reached this ultimate qualifier after winning a series of play-offs, culminating with a winning goal from the penalty spot in the 17^th minute of added time against the United Arab Emirates in Basra.

“It was just an insane finish to the game. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an atmosphere like it, even when there’s been 90,000 in Australia. The 60,000 in Basra were just so loud,” he said.

But now that events beyond his control have put Iraq’s qualification in the balance, he wants their play-off to be postponed until a week before the actual tournament.

“That gives us the time to prepare properly and get our strongest team there,” he said.

“I would say 60 per cent (of the squad are in Iraq). All the goalkeepers are in Iraq. All the backroom staff are from Iraq, and we’ve got to get all the equipment we need out.

“The medical staff are stuck in Qatar. They’re all from Qatar and hopefully they can get visas at some stage.

But Arnold thinks that Iraq’s Football Association should not be left alone to pull off the seemingly impossible.

“We’re doing everything in a very difficult situation to get to those playoffs but Fifa need to control that now, how we get there, because it’s 99 per cent we can’t do it,” said Arnold, who became Australia’s longest-serving national coach when he led them for six years from 2018.

Fifa could tell the Iraqis to drive to Turkey and get a flight from there but that would be unpalatable for the Lions of Mesopotamia , as the national team is known.

They say this would mean a bus journey of ore than 20 hours, forcing them to stop for hours at the boarder checkpoints of the de facto state of Iraqi Kurdistan, and Turkey.

Fifa could adopt Arnold’s idea, giving Norway – themselves at their first World Cup for 28 years – 12 days to prepare for their opening fixture against the play-off winners.

Or football’s governing body could just say ‘tough luck’ to Iraq. ‘Miss us in Mexico, miss out’.

“They can’t do that,” insists the 62-year-old Arnold. “Fifa really have to help us and take over the planning and preparation for us to do this.”

For Iraq’s game not to go ahead as scheduled would leave hundreds of their fans, many of whom have never seen Iraq play at the World Cup, seriously out of pocket to the tune of thousands.

Football and its fans is nothing more than a bystander, clipped into a tailspin by the war, but this scenario would not exist without Fifa ballooning the World Cup to 48 teams.

To have six unfilled places just three months before the World Cup, with no unforeseen globally destabilising event to force a delay to qualifiers, is purely down to the expansion of the tournament.

It seems there simply isn’t enough time in the international calendar for sporting integrity anymore.

But for Iraqis, the bottom line is qualification, and Arnold knows it.

“There are 46 million people obsessed with football. At times they will have a public holiday for when Real Madrid play Barcelona. They’re all out in big parks, watching the game on big TVs.

“The fact that they haven’t qualified for 40 years, if we do it would make the game grow locally,” he says.

“I’ve had that experience working with Australia in 2006. It’s still something people talk about today, that qualification, and how it changed the country and the sport of football in Australia. It would do the same to Iraq.”

Should England, Scotland and Northern Ireland be withdrawn from the World Cup in June to avoid the possibility of playing Argentina?

In government papers released in 2012, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was warned that, far from pressuring or embarrassing the Argentines, withdrawal would present them with a propaganda opportunity.

“The United Kingdom, not Argentina, would be the country set apart,” wrote Cabinet Secretary Robert Armstrong in a letter to Thatcher.

In the end, all four nations played, though never against each other.

But the fact that Margaret Thatcher, while leading a country at war, was kept in touch about the prospect of British teams playing at a football tournament illustrates how significant the World Cup is.

The tournament has been used as a means of soft power ever since the second edition in 1934, which was organised and won by Benito Mussolini’s Italy.

The question of a World Cup boycott was never seriously asked again after 1982, anywhere in the world, until the last day of February 2026.

Then, just hours after an air assault by Israel and America had killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as scores of girls in a primary school in the southern town of Minab, it raised its head once-more.

Randomly, the President of Iran’s football Federation, Mehdi Taj, appeared on tv and was asked if Iran will go to the World Cup in the Americas, where their games against New Zealand, Belgium and Egypt will take place in California and Seattle.

Taj who, in the circumstances, was not an editorially obvious interviewee, said, “With what happened today and with that attack by the United States, it is unlikely that we can look forward to the World Cup, but the sports chiefs are the ones who must decide on that.”

Many media have focused on the first part of the quote but the most pertinent words are right at the end.

Taj is right, this is entirely a political decision.

However, the questions are- who will be the politicians who might make that call, which side will they be on, and who really cares when more than 1,000 civilians have already been killed?

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who’s lived in exile for nearly 50 years and whom I once interviewed about football, has become the figurehead of a fractured opposition.

If, somehow in a few short weeks, he returns to Iran and takes over – a highly unlikely contingency given the strength in numbers of Iran’s ground forces under arms - then Team Melli, as the national team is known, will certainly go to his adopted homeland.

If some kind of civil conflagration occurs, as is likely with rumours of a Kurdish uprising swirling, Iran would not by any means be the first nation to play at a World Cup with ongoing violence at home.

Ivory Coast in 2006 made their World Cup debut with the backdrop of civil war in their homeland and Iraq, 20 years earlier, became the only nation to qualify for a World Cup without playing a single qualifying game on home soil, due to the war with Iran.

And Iran’s own women’s team are currently playing at the Asian Cup, as disconnected and riddled with worry for their loved ones as all Iranians who can’t get through to Iran due to an internet blackout that started shortly after the first missiles dropped.

And what if the Islamic Republic remains?

Then, on the face of it, Iran’s participation is at the greatest risk of being withdrawn.

Yet, unwittingly, the words of Robert Armstrong, about being a nation apart, may echo through the years and land in the mouths of the wise.

After all, what would be the point of not going? Iran’s place, to use a Persian saying, would be empty but hardly noticed as the planet’s best players array themselves.

And would it not be a victory, even before a ball is kicked, to have the Iranian flag raised and anthem played on American soil, albeit an anthem booed by Iran’s fans?

The soft power and PR that comes with having a national team at the World Cup is irresistible.

Iran themselves benefited when their match against the United States at France ’98 was preceded by the Iranian players lavishing the Americans with gifts.

Iran’s coach, Jalal Talebi, had been plucked from obscurity to replace the highly respected Croat Tomislav Ivic because Iran’s rulers wanted them to face the USA with a native on the bench.

As for Fifa, the organisation is in uncharted territory, but a comment from Secretary-General, Mattias Grafsom, throws a lot of light on thinking within.

“our focus is to have a safe World Cup with everybody participating,” he said, following Fifa’s well-trod path of least bureaucratic resistance.

When Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it had no impact on their hosting of the 2018 World Cup.

Equally, when the Confederations Cup of 2013 was overshadowed by widespread violence in Brazil, there was no chance that the tournament would be played somewhere else a year later.

And, with six places in this bloated tournament still to be filled by April, Fifa can still afford to wait and see.

Of course, the Trump administration could take all of the above out of Iran’s and Fifa’s hands by simply not granting the Iran players entry into the country.

But Fifa’s Peace Award winner has so far been more interested in basking in the glory of Iran’s destruction.

“I really don’t care,” Trump told Politico when asked about Iran’s participation in North and Central America. “I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes.”

If nothing changes, Iran take their place and finish second in Group G while the United States finish second in Group D, guess who will play whom in the last 32.

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