Iraq football stars aim for new partnership as MPs

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BAGHDAD, Feb 18, 2010 (AFP) - Once they linked up on the football pitch in one of Iraq's most fabled forward partnerships, taking their native country to its first and only World Cup finals.

Now Karim Saddam and Ahmed Radhi want to team up all over again -- except this time religious differences and party politics stand in their way as they both run for parliament in March 7 elections.

Saddam is a Shiite and supported by the Iraqi National Alliance of leading Shiite religious party the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's anti-US movement.

Radhi is a Sunni Arab backed by the Iraqi Bloc of pro-Western former prime minister Iyad Allawi -- a secular alliance accused by many Shiites of being a haven for former members of executed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

But both men are united in their goal of giving sport a stronger voice in government, and Saddam said he hoped his former teammate would win election to parliament regardless of their opposing tickets.

When Iraq qualified for the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico, it was Saddam, now 50, who scored the winner against the United Arab Emirates that got them there.

Radhi scored Iraq's only goal of the finals in a 2-1 defeat by Belgium.

"Recent history has shown that football and sport in general unite the Iraqi people, and that's brilliant," Saddam told AFP.

"That's why it doesn't matter to me that my teammate is standing on a different list. I just hope that we're both going to win, so that we can again be teammates in the interests of sport."

Football has done it before.

In summer 2007, at the height of the sectarian bloodshed between Shiites and Sunnis that tore Iraq apart, the guns fell silent for two hours as Iraq played and beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 to become Asian champions.

The whole country then erupted in gunfire -- not in anger but celebration.

Saddam said he was realistic about the challenges of the campaign ahead but was determined to win more influence for a sport that played such a positive role in Iraqi society.

"Of course there'll be some bad tackles during the campaign but I'll try to ride them. Don't forget that we're forwards and we know how to dribble to reach the goal," he said.

"I'm not a politician but sport needs strong voices in parliament so that we can secure the creation of the infrastructure which is currently lacking."

Radhi, widely regarded as Iraq's best ever player, still hopes to be sports minister, although the list he is standing on has been badly depleted by the disqualification of suspected former Baathists.

"If I get the job, I'll make some very big changes," he told AFP.

"The current minister is an engineer and has no sporting experience whereas I've been a player, a manager and a club chairman."

Radhi took a prominent role in US efforts to promote football as a unifying force after the invasion of 2003.

He put his skills to good use at one US-sponsored exhibition event, running rings around occupation head Paul Bremer and showing how little the Americans had to teach Iraqis about their own national game.

Radhi is already a member of parliament but has yet to win election -- the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Iraqi Concord Front, co-opted him after one of its elected MPs stood down, reportedly to join the anti-US insurgency.

But while Saddam and Radhi are running for parliament, there isn't room for a third member of the forward line in Iraq's golden team of 1986.

Hussein Saeed is to this day Iraq's top goalscorer and most capped player but his reputation has been mired in controversy by his subsequent career as a top football administrator under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.

Saeed had agreed to stand on the same ticket as his former teammate Radhi, but withdrew his candidacy in the face of what he alleged were threats against him by senior officials of the Shiite-led government.

Although he remains the head of the Iraqi Football Federation, many Shiites revile him for the role he played before the invasion as deputy to Saddam's feared elder son Uday, who used his role as head of the Iraq Olympic Committee to terrorise the country's sportsmen and ensure favoured sides won.

Government efforts to replace Saeed landed Iraq a brief suspension by the International Olympic Committee and world football's governing body FIFA for breaking rules outlawing political interference, and he now lives as an emigre in neighbouring Jordan.

"Some very senior government officials were very threatening towards me when they heard that I intended to stand as a candidate," he told AFP by telephone from the Jordanian capital Amman.

"So imagine what could have happened, if I'd actually managed to win."