Iraq's Journey to the World Cup: Overcoming Challenges to Reach Monterrey
The road to Monterrey began long before Iraq ever saw a football pitch.
It started in cars and buses, crawling across a country scarred by war. Players and staff converged on Baghdad from scattered cities, some journeys stretching to eight punishing hours. From there, the real ordeal began: roughly 15 hours on rough, broken roads to Amman, Jordan, one of the few places in the region where flights were still taking off.
Only then could they think about Mexico.
Fifa laid on a private charter, but even that came at a cost: nine hours stuck on the ground. When the plane finally lifted, it was eight hours to Lisbon, a two‑hour layover, and then a 12‑hour haul across the Atlantic. By the time they reached Monterrey, Iraq’s players had travelled for the best part of two days for what René Meulensteen, assistant to head coach Graham Arnold, calls “the most important game in their lives”.
They arrived exhausted but on time. Recovery, not tactics, became the first priority. And when the decisive playoff against Bolivia kicked off, something else took over.
Iraq won 2-1. A place at their first World Cup in 40 years was theirs.
A nation awake before dawn
The Estadio in Monterrey felt oddly familiar. The remaining tickets had been handed to local Mexicans, who came in numbers and noise, and they were joined by a large Iraqi diaspora contingent from the United States. The “away” game turned into something close to a home crowd.
It was also a return to the scene of history. Iraq’s only previous World Cup appearance came in Mexico in 1986. Meulensteen and Arnold leaned into that story.
“We told the players: ‘Let’s realise what kind of journey we’ve had to get here and perhaps the match is meant to be here, as Iraq’s previous World Cup participation was staged in Mexico.’”
Back in Baghdad, it was early morning. Nobody slept.
Videos pinged through to Meulensteen’s phone: streets jammed with people, horns, fireworks, flags. A city that has known too much grief suddenly roaring with something else.
“It was absolute madness in Baghdad,” Meulensteen says. “The whole nation has been craving something to celebrate and this gives people a huge boost of energy and hope. You can really feel the sense of pride; there’s a genuine feelgood factor.”
For Iraq, football has often arrived at the darkest of times. Fourth place at the 2004 Olympics, where they beat Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal. The 2007 Asian Cup, won in the middle of a civil war and briefly binding a fractured country together. Even the 1986 World Cup came against a backdrop of conflict.
Now, with the country still feeling what Meulensteen calls “the aftereffects of the second Gulf war”, this qualification lands with the same emotional weight. The cities are rebuilding, but he is blunt: you cannot compare Iraq’s infrastructure to Dubai or the new football hubs of Saudi Arabia.
Yet on the team bus, you would never know it.
“You should hear them on the bus to training and matches, singing and listening to music,” Meulensteen says. “It’s absolutely brilliant.”
The toughest draw in town
The reward for all that suffering? A group that looks like a cruel joke.
France. Senegal. Norway. Power, pedigree, and Erling Haaland.
“It’s like Manchester United against Grimsby,” Meulensteen quips, referencing last August’s Carabao Cup shock when Grimsby knocked out Southampton, then still a Premier League side, and reminding everyone that football ignores scripts. The Dutchman has lived this before. With Arnold and Australia at the last World Cup, he walked into a group containing France, Denmark and Tunisia. Few gave them a chance.
Australia beat Denmark. They beat Tunisia. They pushed Argentina hard in the last 16.
“That’s where our biggest strength lies: the element of surprise,” he says.
Iraq will need every ounce of it. The squad is a blend: players born in Iraq and others from the diaspora with Iraqi heritage. Not all of them speak Arabic, but football has its own language and Meulensteen meets them halfway, armed with an intermediate level he picked up in Qatar in the 1990s.
That move to Qatar in 1993 came with its own life twist. To comply with local rules, he had to marry his girlfriend because living together out of wedlock was not allowed. It was the first of many cultural adjustments in a career that has taken him from the Gulf to Manchester, from India to the World Cup.
From Carrington to Baghdad
Meulensteen’s journey to Iraq runs straight through Carrington and one of the most dominant club sides English football has seen.
He arrived at Manchester United in 2001 via academy director Lee Kershaw and a recommendation from Dave Mackay, who had worked with him in Qatar’s under‑17s. Meulensteen started in the academy, then moved into individual work with first‑team players. After a brief spell as Brøndby head coach, he returned to Old Trafford in 2007 and his role intensified. That season, he worked closely with Ronaldo.
They went deep on detail. Video sessions. Finishing drills. Meulensteen divided the penalty area into zones, teaching Ronaldo how to read the type of cross, the defender’s position, the best finish for each situation. The message was simple: less show, more kill.
He urged Ronaldo to be “as unpredictable as possible”, to vary his game. Stepovers mattered less than timing and choice. Over time, Ronaldo mastered it.
What struck Meulensteen most was not the talent, but the obsession. At Carrington, there was a fenced cage with rebound boards. Training would finish; Ronaldo would walk in there alone for another 10 or 15 minutes. Meulensteen designed exercises with those boards to sharpen his touch and creativity. Ronaldo devoured them.
At the end of that season’s work, Meulensteen compiled everything into a DVD – essentially a PowerPoint with clips – outlining drills, goals, and the importance of setting targets. Clear objectives, he told him, separate the successful from the rest.
Before the 2007‑08 season, he asked Ronaldo for his goal tally aim after a 23‑goal campaign.
“Thirty,” came the answer.
“What about 40?” Meulensteen replied.
Ronaldo nodded. He finished with 42 as United won both the Premier League and the Champions League.
In the summer of 2008, Meulensteen became first‑team coach, charged with designing and leading training. Sir Alex Ferguson sat him down with three sheets of flipchart paper and, in essence, handed him the club’s playing manifesto.
Defensive principles on one. Possession principles on another. Then the third sheet, which Ferguson called the most important.
“When we attack, I want to do so with pace, power, penetration and unpredictability,” Ferguson told him. “And I want you to apply those four things in every training session in some way.”
Look back at United at their peak under Ferguson and you can see those four words stamped all over them.
Coaching fear, not just football
Since leaving United in 2013, Meulensteen’s path has been varied: a short spell at Fulham, work in the United States, Israel, India, then that run with Australia to the World Cup. The locations change, but the coaching principles stay the same.
He spends as much time dealing with players’ minds as with their first touch. When doubts creep in, he does not wave them away. He asks players to “give it a shape”. What exactly is the fear? Is it the consequences of not winning? The reaction back home? The risk of failure on a global stage?
He tells them they cannot control every thought that flashes through their head or every noise from outside. They can control what they choose to focus on: playing well, scoring, reaching a World Cup. He prefers to “add” to a player’s game rather than tear anything down.
Words matter. Ferguson drilled that into him. “He always said the two most important coaching words are: well done,” Meulensteen recalls. Late in training, Ferguson would often wander past, tap him on the shoulder, and say exactly that.
The bond between them grew. Away trips became rolling quizzes. On buses and trains, they would fire up Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on Meulensteen’s iPad. Ferguson’s recall astonished him. Politics, history, the American civil war, films, actors – the United manager seemed to have a story or an answer for everything.
Every so often, they still meet for a cup of tea. Ninety minutes, two hours, gone in a flash. United, Meulensteen says, was a “beautiful period” of his life.
Now he is chasing another one, this time with Iraq, a team that has crossed closed airspace and bumpy roads just to reach the starting line. France, Senegal and Norway await.
The odds are stacked. The element of surprise is theirs.
