In a game of many missed chances Saturday night, Mohammed Emad and Sepp Blatter didn’t miss theirs.
Emad flipped himself into the air and, with an overhead bicycle kick, knocked Australia out of the men’s Olympic soccer tournament and at the same time put his own country, Iraq, into the semifinals with a 1-0 victory at Pankritio Stadium.
Blatter, too, was forced into all sorts of verbal somersaults by questions from British journalist Jamie Jackson of England’s Observer newspaper, and his answer was nowhere near as deft as Emad’s acrobatics.
“After Iraq had beaten Portugal 4-2, you raised the hand of the president of the Iraq football federation, Saeed Hussein, who used to work for Uday Hussein, the son of Saddam Hussein,” Jackson began. “Wasn’t that a little bit embarrassing for you?”
Blatter, president of FIFA and a member of the International Olympic Committee, was momentarily flustered but had time to conjure up an answer while the question was translated into Greek.
“He was at that time the general secretary of the federation,” Blatter said. “He was also a member of one of FIFA’s committees. He was always a good-standing member of the FIFA committee. We helped him to take the leadership of the federation despite opposition inside the country.
“He is footballer. He was a footballer. We trust him and we regret what has happened with politics in Iraq. We are going forward, looking forward, and working also not only for football but also for peace.
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“Football can be one of the tools of peace.”
Saeed Hussein was not at Saturday’s news conference.
Iraq will play Paraguay, which edged South Korea 3-2. And Italy will meet Argentina in the other semifinal.