Home goals

Football stadiums around Iraq have been brimful of spectators and cheer these past days,as the national football team plays its first matches at home,in this case against a Palestinian team,since the American invasion in 2003. Iraqs footballers have expectedly been winning their matches,but even if they had lost,they would not have harboured an older fear. When Iraqi football was in the care of Saddam Husseins son,losses in big-ticket games brought his wrath upon the team. But the relief expressed by players like the goalkeeper,Mohammed Gasad,was of a higher order: We are tired of travelling, he said. Now we have our own country.

Sport is transcendent in so many ways. The specifics of a match and the scoreline do not always reflect its import. For Iraqis,famously passionate about their football,the commencement of home matches would be an index of the possible gain of normality. In neighbouring Iran,football has been an index of other national issues. When some players sported green armbands in a recent outing as show of support to Mir-Hossein Moussavi,they drew the ire of the hardline government. Football,as hardliners know,has the potential to moderate even the strictest of their diktats. Stories abound of men and women streaming out into the streets in celebration after a key football victory,with even the policemen humbled by the occasion into turning a blind eye to violations of the social code. In fact,it was at a football game that a group of women won the right of entry into the stadium some years ago,thereby asserting their entitlement to public spaces.

Football is much too often associated with hooliganism. But from Iraq we get proof of its capacity to right so many things.