It did not matter to Ahmed Mohamed, a 25-year-old construction worker from the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, that his native land’s Olympic soccer team could not keep its gold-medal dream alive.
“Considering all our problems, getting as far as our team did in this tournament is as good as a gold medal for Iraqis,” said Mohamed, who has lived in Athens for four years, after Iraq fell 3-1 to Paraguay in the semifinals Tuesday.
Hundreds of Iraqi expatriates, mostly manual laborers in Europe, followed their Olympic team around Greece as it advanced much further than many had predicted.
The loss to Paraguay hardly dampened the enthusiasm of the Iraqis who came to this northern Greek city from Athens and from northern Europe to pound drums and chant for 90 minutes.
Samer Ganni, an Iraqi businessman in Athens, rented buses to transport fans to Thessaloniki and distributed tickets to the semifinal game.
He estimated that 7,000 Iraqis came to Athens during Saddam Hussein’s reign, and they continue to live there because of the instability in their homeland. Other fans came from as far as Germany, Sweden and Denmark to cheer the team.
“We want to show that in Iraq, there are no differences between Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shi’ite, Muslim or Christian,” Ganni said at the team’s hotel before the game. “There are no hatreds among us, like the news media portray it.”
Iraqi Olympic officials carefully dodged questions about politics. No players appeared to speak at the postgame news conference.
Funding from the U.S. government helped Iraq bring the soccer team and seven other athletes to compete in the Olympic Games. No Iraqi athlete has won a medal in Athens. A weightlifter won Iraq’s only medal, a bronze, in Rome in 1960.
The Iraqi soccer team still could earn a medal in the bronze-medal game Friday against Italy. Paraguay advanced to face Argentina, which beat Italy in the other semifinal Tuesday to set up an all-South American final Saturday.
Iraq came into the semifinal match with high hopes after upsetting Portugal in its opening game and knocking out Australia in the quarterfinals.
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But as Iraqi forwards wasted repeated chances, Paraguay took an insurmountable lead on two first-half goals by Jose Saturnino Cardozo, a veteran of two World Cups who plays his club soccer for Toluca in the Mexican league.
With Paraguay up 3-0, Iraq’s Farhan Razzaq scored a late consolation goal.