WTG Devin

The other day I checked my blog, thinking, “Hey, maybe I’ve posted something new. O wait . . .” I can’t wait until I’m addicted to posting like I’m addicted to checking my email every .2 seconds, and my friends have to chisel my fingers away from the keyboard or maybe put a bottle of Jamesons across the room under a rock that’s feebly propped up with a stick.

So I’ve just finished my Arabic class this semester, along with my boxing class and my tutoring jobs (more on those later). Unlike most classes, which end with a big final, or a big presentation, or a big paper, my professor was like, “Hey guys, how about you bring me 4 essays, and then speak in Arabic for 10 minutes on a topic using advanced vocabulary you don’t know yet, and then we’ll have a two hour final, and then I’ll smack you around for a bit with this tire iron.”

I like presentations in other languages about as much as I like getting sprayed in the eyes with cleaning fluid, so I wait until the night before to pick a topic and prepare notes. Because most of my classmates went with topics that were guaranteed to be incomprehensible to anyone except the professor (water treatment systems in the Middle East, the symbolism found in Arabic gardens), and because I didn’t feel like writing out my entire presentation, I decided to do the Iraqi soccer team winning the 2007 Asia Cup.

More specifically, the final game where the Iraqi national team beat Saudi Arabia (3-time champions) to win the 2007 Asia Cup. The more I read about the game and the team, the more impressed I got. The other teams had been playing together for months and practicing in state of the art facilities. The Iraq team met two months before the Cup started, and had to train outside of Iraq because of the war. Their coach, a Brazilian named Jorvan Vieira, met the team a month before the Cup started (Brazilians are apparently way better at soccer than Asians. He stated in a press conference that “winning the Asia Cup would look good on my resume”). One of the team trainers was killed in a car bomb explosion on the way to picking up his airplane tickets. The goalkeeper’s brother-in-law was killed just before the tournament began, a midfielder’s relatives were kidnapped and murdered, and a forward’s stepmother died two days before the quarter final in Vietnam.

On an interesting side note the Iraqi team is known as Asuud A’rrafidain, or Lions of the Two Rivers. In Greek, “Mesopotamia” means “the land between the two rivers”. Those two rivers would be the Tigris and the Euphrates, and Iraqis often call their country by the aforementioned name.

When Iraq won the semifinal game against Korea, thousands of Iraqis celebrated wildly in the streets, until two car bombs killed 50 people in Baghdad. What the hell. So there was a vehicle ban in Baghdad for the finals. There was also a shooting bullets into the air ban, but of course as soon as the Iraq team scored that went right out the window, and four Iraqis died from falling bullets.

The team is a symbol of unity in Iraq because it is made up of Sunni, Shi’a, and Kurdish players. The Bush administration really wanted to use this win as propaganda for how it was possible for the people of Iraq to unite as one. Unfortunately, Younes Mahmoud, captain of the team and purveyor of amazing headers, came out against the American occupation as soon as the game was over. Look how emocionado this guy is:

Younes Mahmoud could eat the American occupation. I’ll leave you with this awesome clip which proves once again that every foreign sports announcer in the world is more exciting than one speaking English.

Younes crushes the spirit of Saudi Arabia: