USOC’s Aid Suggestion Could Use Wider Scope

How kind of the United States Olympic Committee to suggest the other day that it wants to help Iraq get back on its feet.

One would have thought -- what with its drug scandals (see Carl Lewis et al) and its bribery scandals (see Salt Lake City et al) -- that the USOC might have wanted to pay attention to its own house before helping others, but no.

Given its beneficent intentions, perhaps the USOC can do something about Israel too. After all, the Israelis are in just as unsatisfactory a situation as the Iraqis, and Iraq already has the inscrutable Bernd Stange looking out for its interests.

Stange, followers of international soccer might recall, is the former East German coach who ignored widespread criticism, even in his own country, and in November signed a four-year contract to be Iraq’s national coach.

“You have to keep sports and politics strictly separated,” he told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper at the time. “I will avoid politics. No one can force me into a political position.”

Never mind that during his contract negotiations he had posed for a photograph in front of a picture of Saddam Hussein.

“What could I say?” Stange asked when questioned about it by Reuters. “I can’t tell them: ‘I’m not going to allow any pictures with your boss.’ I certainly didn’t go out of my way to pose in front of the portrait.”

And never mind that Hussein’s son, Uday, was president of the Iraqi Football Federation and the Iraqi Olympic Committee at the time and certainly would have had to sign off on Stange’s hiring.

“I don’t have anything to do with the regime,” Stange, 54, told Germany’s SID sports news agency.

When war broke out and Stange had to hot-foot it out of Baghdad, he was anything but apolitical.

“I am bitterly disappointed that politics can find no other way than lobbing bombs on my footballers,” he said.

Now that the unpleasantness has subsided somewhat, Stange wants to go back to Baghdad and rebuild the Iraqi Olympic and national teams. He envisions, somewhat implausibly, going on tour “perhaps to London or other cities” for a series of friendly internationals.

“Football for me represents peace and that’s why we should get back to playing again as soon as possible,” he told Reuters last week.

Not that Stange expects to be welcomed by Americans, now running the show in Baghdad.

“I don’t expect much from Americans -- they don’t have a big attachment to soccer anyway,” he said. “But I would hope the English Football Assn. might help us get off the ground again.

“I’d very much like to get back with the people in Iraq and give them encouragement to look forward to better times.”

Israel has been waiting for those “better times” forever, it seems. Given the endless misery in the Middle East, it is waiting in vain.

When Coach Avraham Grant takes his team to Palermo, Sicily, on Monday for Wednesday’s “home” European Championship qualifying match against Cyprus, the difficulties Israel faces once again will be painfully apparent.

Most countries have only to worry about keeping their players in shape and in form. Israel has to worry about keeping its players alive.

As a result, its experience this week will likely mirror that of April 2, when Israel played European champion France in another “home” Euro 2004 qualifying match at Palermo.

Then, as always, the Israelis were under extraordinarily tight security. They were confined to their well-guarded hotel, to a training facility and to the city’s Renzo Barbera stadium. No sightseeing was allowed.

On game day, the 1,000-strong security operation included not only heavily-armed Italian police but members of Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and RAID, a French special security unit.

Everyone entering the stadium was closely searched and had to pass through metal detectors. Bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled inside and outside the stadium. Helicopters circled overhead and sharpshooters were positioned on a hillside overlooking the playing field.

All because of a soccer game.

All because Israel and Israeli athletes live under the constant threat of a terrorist attack.

All because Israel is not allowed to play international club or national team matches on its own soil.

Of course, if UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, had not agreed to accept Israel into its fold in 1991, the chances are Israel would not be playing any international matches at all.

Technically, Israel is supposed to be part of the Asian Football Confederation, but it was ousted from the AFC in 1976 when Arab nations continually refused to play it.

For the next 15 years, Israel played as an associate member of the Oceania Football Confederation, despite the obvious geographic nonsense of that arrangement.

Being a part of Europe makes a little more sense but it still has not solved Israel’s problems. Its national team has not played an official match at home in 18 months, and the wave of suicide bomb attacks in Israel last year led UEFA to ban all Israeli teams from playing official international matches on home soil.

Israel has fought the ban, promising to guarantee the safety of visiting teams and fans, but few believe such guarantees can be taken seriously given the deep-seated hatred that is at the root of the conflict.

And so Israel wanders from country to country, seeking a place to play. This month it is Italy. Next month it might be England or Hungary or Romania or anywhere Grant’s team can feel secure and welcome.

“We would certainly like to be playing in Israel,” Grant told Associated Press before the April 2 match. “Our fans deserve to see a team like France, but this is the situation and we have to play in Italy.

“It’s not good to let terror win. I understand UEFA’s decision, but I don’t accept it. We want to play in our home.”

And so, like the rest of the players, Israel’s captain, Tal Banin, just shrugs when the question of security is raised.

“For us, it’s normal to see people with guns,” he told AP. “It’s not nice to see, but we know there are people in the world who want to harm Israelis. We have to be optimists. What will be will be.

“This is not sport, but we’re used to it.”

In 2003, that is a sad statement to make.

Sadder still, no matter what help, if any, the USOC provides to Iraq, the chances of Stange’s team ever facing Grant’s team on the playing field remains as distant as the prospect of peace.