Iraq make history by seeing off Syria - ON THIS DAY IN 1985...
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| AFP |
History was on the horizon. Either Iraq or Syria would be heading to their first FIFA World Cup™ if they emerged victorious from their showdown in Taif, the second leg of a Mexico 1986 qualifier that was wide open after a goalless first match. Ahmed Radhi, who would go on to captain Iraq and be regarded as one of the country’s finest ever players, was a raw 21-year-old forward hoping to etch his name into history.
“We were ready for that match,” Radhi told FIFA.com in an exclusive chat. “We prepared for a week in Saudi Arabia before playing the second leg. We didn’t feel that it was going to be a tough task for us and when we took the lead, things opened for us.”
The Iraqis led at the interval thanks to Hussain Said Mohammed’s strike, and Mahmoud Shaker doubled their advantage just after the break. Despite Walid Abou El-Sel pulling a goal back, Khalil Mohamed made sure of the result, and the Iraqis’ passage to Mexico, with his side’s third.
“The dream of each player in the world is to play in the World Cup and to be honest we couldn’t believe it,” Radhi recalled. “There were a lot of positive things that happened for us after reaching the finals.”
With the region in the midst of a war that consumed a number of gulf states for most of the 1980s, the process of playing the qualifiers was difficult for Radhi and his team-mates, with Iraq (along with Iran and Lebanon) playing their ‘home’ matches at neutral or away venues.
“Obviously it was very hard to travel to Syria [for the first leg] as we travelled to Jordan and from there, we moved to Damascus,” Radhi remembered. “There was a big tension that surrounded the match.”
That pressure, on the playing side at least, from the first leg was slightly eased by their three-goal winning performance in Saudi Arabia. Radhi would indeed go on to write his own name into the history books by scoring his country’s first, and so far only, World Cup goal against Belgium the following summer.