Syria:
Football on the frontline

The walls of the sports hall vibrate when yet another mortar bomb lands close by.

Two hundred children, competing in a regional taekwondo tournament, barely flinch at the sound of the detonation.

This is part of daily life in Syria’s war-torn capital Damascus. The children trying to win medals on this particular Friday morning have known nothing else during their short, turbulent lives.

“In this sport complex, more than 170 mortars have landed,” says Brigadier General Mowaffak Joumaa, the president of Syria’s national Olympic committee who is in the audience.

“If we hide after each mortar, the terrorists will soon arrive to our homes.”

You can’t speak of daily life in Syria without looking at the impact the violence has had - and sport is no different.

For the past six years the country has been ravaged by war and the stories that have been told are horrifying and dehumanising in equal measure.

Since the uprising began in 2011, there has been little positivity spoken in connection with the country, but then there is the remarkable story of Syria's national football team.

The relationship that exists between this national team and its people depicts the power of sport on a personal, cultural and political level.

It goes to the heart of what makes sport matter.

“We want our players to play outside Syria, we need our players to play outside Syria”.

There is perhaps no more telling indictment of the crisis in Syrian football than the national team's assistant coach actively encouraging their best players to leave the troubled country and play abroad.

Tarek Jabban not only coaches for his country, but was one of the most decorated footballers in Syrian league history. A player before the war, he knows better than most how far the national game has fallen since fighting began six years ago.

The league is in such a state of decay that players here do not have the support or the access to facilities that can be offered abroad.

Many already have left, and the majority of the 23 players who are in Malaysia this week are currently playing abroad, many of them star players including captain Ahmad Al Salih who plays for Henan Jianye in China, Firas Al-Khatib one of the squads most experienced players plays for Al Kuwait.

Omar Kharbin is another to earn a fortune by Syrian standards playing for one of the Middle East’s most famous teams, Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia. Arguably the best player still based in Syria is his cousin Osama Omari, he plays with Al-Wahda in Damascus, and is top scorer in the league.

Unlike the others, Omari has no option to move away. He was conscripted into the army and is on release to the Al-Wahda football club from the Ministry of Defence. Many left before the war and other young men, including Kharbin, avoided the draft by merit of being an only child.

Such are the fine margins of life here.

As a result of the conflict, the league has shrunk geographically, with teams playing only in areas where government exerts control.

Effectively the league has been centered around two major cities, Damascus and Latakia. But as the regime retook rebel held areas in some of the places most devastated by the war, football has begun to expand again and in January of this year football returned to the city of Aleppo. Games are also played further south in Homs now.

The rapid return of football to these areas shows the government’s desire to use the game to display life as returning to normal and of the war as being won. What could be more normal than going to a football match?

But like the normality, this “growth” of the game is an illusion.

The truth is that the league is in crisis.

Years of economic sanctions and a crash in the value of the Syrian pound have meant that there is no money in the league. There is no money in the Syrian FA which runs the league.

We are told private investment is minimal and it’s government money that keeps it afloat. Attendances are poor at all but a handful of games because the fans have little money and there are legitimate security fears around gathering in large public crowds.

The average salary of a good Syrian player in the domestic league is just $200 (£161) a month. That’s a good wage by Syrian standards but can’t compare with the money available elsewhere. The team that wins the league gets just $10,000 (£8,000).

It is against this backdrop that the best players have left and that the clubs are unable to attract any overseas talent. Unsurprisingly there are no foreign players in the league.

One player who left before the war was Mohannad Ibrahim, he developed through the youth system of Al Karamah in Homs, one of the oldest clubs in the country. Now aged 30, he was an established international, but then left to go to Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic before now playing in Jordan for Kufr Som.

“In general the economic situation in Syria is now difficult and of course this reflects on sport,"says Ibrahim. "I know many members of the team and I am in contact with them and they are all facing very difficult living conditions.

He last played for the national team in 2011. He says he has received many invitations since to play for the team but had declined for what he describes as personal reasons, rather than political ones.

“Of course I wish to be with them but as you know there are many conditions that prevent me from being committed with the team, and those same conditions obliged me to apologise to join the team, nevertheless my heart is with them I wish them the best of luck. I wish they can perform the best level they can and qualify, and to be one of the best-qualified teams.”

We went to see a domestic league fixture between Al Shrta [the police team] and Jableh who come from near Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.

The game is being played at the Tishreen stadium in Damascus on a Friday afternoon. The army patrol the gates to this complex with machine guns, a reminder of the security fears that mean many won’t come and why attendances remain low.

This ground, more than any, is proof of that. Four years ago in a hotel on the complex, Youssef Suleiman, a player from Homs-based al-Wathbah club, was killed by a mortar as he prepared to play a game here in the Syrian domestic league.

Inside the ground what fans have made it are in good voice. Drums and songs from a small corner echo around a ground empty on three sides. There are about 300 people here.

One fan who has brought his young family along is not deterred.

“It is very important to keep hope and to stay optimistic,” he tells us. “Live our life in normal way, in sport, in everything. The kids need to live a normal life, what's happening is not their fault, they need to watch sport, go to their schools, go to public parks, they have to.

At half-time we are allowed down on to the running track that goes round the pitch. We are there to meet the man in charge of the Syrian national team and the man chiefly responsible for their run of results in qualifying.

As we wait, we get a closer look at the pitch - bald patches of dry earth and a very coarse greenery that barely resembles grass. It is no wonder the first half was delayed so much by injuries.

The head coach Ayman Hakeem knows the problems well: “Those results we made until now is a miracle, because of the very bad circumstances we are living, all the other teams play in their homes but we can't, we play outside all the time. What we did until now is a proof of the high spirit our players have.”

Over his shoulder a huge billboard of President Bashar Assad dominates the empty stand behind the goal. It is a reminder of the war that is the backdrop to everything in Syria. Its effect on domestic football, as well as neutral venues and lack of friendlies for the national team mean the odds are stacked against Syria more than any other team, but the coach is not put off.

As we return to the stands, walking with the national coach, the crowd begin to chant “Russia, Russia, Russia”. We think it is in recognition of their World Cup campaign, but our translator tells us it because they think we are Russian. They presumably think the only western media allowed or even interested in Syrian football would be Russian.

The match finishes 3-2 to Jableh, like many high-scoring affairs the standard is poor, which confirms the expectations.

It wasn’t always like this though. Footballing culture runs deep in Syria and before the rebellion began the national game was flourishing. An example of its popularity and reach came in 2005 when the women’s national team played their first competitive match.

The men are attracting all the attention right now, but Syria’s women’s team are about to embark on their own World Cup pre-qualifying campaign too, in many ways just as significant as the men's.

Unlike their male counterparts, games stopped entirely because of the war. They have not played a competitive international since 2011 and after waiting six years are now about to play four games in eight days in Vietnam.

Noor Jrees is 21 and is in the squad that are basing themselves at Syrian FA headquarters before heading out to Hanoi.

Jrees said: “We have the power to participate, and we have the hope that we are going to make good results of course with all the support we have and the coaches who are helping a lot, we will make good results”.

Whether it’s the women or the men, national or club, there is a definite enthusiasm for football here but it is in spite of the situation, fighting the atrophy in the infrastructure and quality of domestic football, against the backdrop of war.

Ibrahim told us that the Syrian fans are “the smile” of the game.

They haven’t had much to smile about recently, but their national teams are doing their very best to change that.

“The crisis started and the war erupted, a shell hit our house and killed my brother. We were forced to leave and take refuge.”

This is Mohammad Al Khalaf, but the story is one familiar to many of the 80,000 Syrian refugees inside Za’atari refugee camp in northern Jordan.

“Almost every house in the camp, has the same story, either they have someone who is a martyr, someone injured, someone missing or arrested. These are the stories of the camp.”

We have come here because no story about modern-day Syria is complete without the refugees’ perspective and football is no different.

We are sat together on a beaten-up sofa outside a café, which, like all the buildings here, is made of flat-pack metal sheeting courtesy of the United Nations. It’s on the main thorough-fare through the camp known as the ‘Champs Elysees’.

But this is not France, it is far more affecting.

Al Khalaf was playing football for Al Majd club in Al-Qadam and the war forced him to quit his career. Like many he is angry, like few he expresses it.

“We are angry because the families are separated by the war. All the Syrians’ families are separated, that’s why we have so much anger. But what shall we do?

Situated 15km from the Syrian border, the settlement opened in 2012 and is now the fourth largest in the country and everyone here is trying to re-build their life in some way. Al Khalaf is no different, he has a job with one of the non-government organisations (NGOs), but crucially he has also found another football club.

He is allowed a pass to leave the camp, which allows him to train with the team, it has to be renewed every two weeks. Most residents here are only allowed one pass a year.

It is only with a club in the Jordanian second division and he isn’t being paid, but it is a start.

We travel further down the dusty desert track that runs from one end of this vast site to the other, flanked on both sides by more metal-boxed small businesses.

In one, what look like legs of lamb hang in the dusty, Perspex window with a wooden chopping block behind. This provides a leaning post for the butcher, and there’s more chatting than chopping going on.

A few doors down, a small radio is on, playing music of a genre known simply as ‘tinny’. Below in his workshop sits a man on a stool, rolled cigarette in mouth, smoke in his eyes. He repairs spokes on a broken wheel while more bikes await repair outside. The camp has it’s own bus system but most people walk or cycle.

Weaving between pedestrians, bikes and occasional sewage collection trucks we are heading to meet Issam Al Masri. Like Al Khalaf, he left his football career behind when he fled Syria. He was aged just 18.

He lives just off the ‘Champs Elysees’. Behind a corrugated iron fence with a door of the same battered material, his home is a collection of the windowed metal boxes.

Now 22, Al Masri lives here with his mum, dad, six sisters and one brother. Before the war they lived in Daraa, close to the border with Jordan, and where the Syrian uprising began in 2011.

After two years of war in 2013 the family left their home and walked across the border. They each took just one bag filled with clothes.

“The war that started in our country and the tough living conditions which we couldn’t tolerate, made us obliged to leave as did many others, so we ended up here in Za’atari.

"We couldn’t find jobs or couldn’t work to feed our children and families.”

Asked if he is angry or sad, he shrugs his shoulders, makes a gesture of resignation with his hands and smiles.

“Each one of us has to conceal his feelings..."

In the family living room, with a patchwork of rugs covering the floor and cushions around the walls to sit on, Al Masri is in a corner with his dad, his younger brother sits on his dad’s lap.

On a table and the wall next to them are the trophies and medals of Al Masri’s footballing career. It’s an impressive collection.

We’d been told that he was the best player in the camp and the medals seem to back that up.

When they left Syria he had a promising career ahead of him with Syrian Premier League club Al Shula in Daraa.

He hasn’t given up. "I still have hopes and many dreams, my first dream is to become a famous player and play with a famous club.”

He says he had to leave more trophies behind - “there was twice as many of them”, he adds, with a mix of pride and sadness.

As we prepare to leave, his mum asks if there is anything we can do to help her son’s career. She perhaps more than anyone knows how important it is to him. We tell her that many people will see his story and offer a hopeful "inshallah" [God willing]. Sadly, we can promise no more.

Although not yet playing for a club, Al Masri is now coaching football in the camp. He is employed by a project jointly funded by Uefa and the Asian Football development programme to offer football coaching to children of all ages.

We arrive at what looks like a school playground.

In the corner, small boys around six years old are doing what life here offers them little chance to do, they are smiling and being kids, as they pursue a football around a patch of gravel. It’s chaotic and unstructured, supervised but not coached, they are simply encouraged to have fun.

In the Tarmac’d area, older boys are receiving more structured coaching from Al Masri, practising headers, chesting and close control – he’s encouraging and instructive in equal measure, his Arabic interspersed with the occasional “bravo”.

The project has just celebrated its four-year anniversary, introduced with the hope of using football to help these kids forget, albeit briefly, the situation these they find themselves in.

“All these kids saw the war,” says Aduallah al Nahhasis, the project’s co-ordinator. “The war, even for an adult is difficult to see, all the killing and all the blood. When they first came here it was difficult for them to leave their caravan, but after that they started to adapt to the situation.

“At first it was for the boys but when we saw that some girls were interested, we offered it to them, so in the end we can make all the girls and boys so happy now.”

When they first offered coaching to girls they had just three players. Cultural sensitivities of the refugees, many of whom came from rural areas of southern Syria, were a big obstacle -they were reluctant to allow their daughters to play in public.

The Euro 2016-branded tarpaulins that surround the project are not a cynical marketing tool - this was the organisers' response to those sensitivities, allowing the girls to train in private. There are now more than 1,000 taking part.

The project runs organised leagues with 12 teams representing the districts of the camp. NGOs and charities also have teams. Football, it is fair to say, has established itself as a central part of camp life.

It’s that ability of sport, in this case football, to bring people together that means both Al Masri and Al Khalaf will be supporting the national team on their World Cup journey.

“Sport has nothing to do with politics," says Al Khalaf. "We have to move forward and sport has a message and we should relay this message. If the Syrian team plays with any other country, for sure and from the bottom of my heart I will back it and support it."

Al Khalaf’s little bit of success in finding a team to play for whilst here in the camp, no matter how small, gives the likes of Al Masri and the next generation hope that they can build a football career outside Syria.

Hope is important here. And so too is football.

Kouteibah Al Refai is a worried man.

For weeks now he has been making increasingly frantic calls in an attempt to arrange a warm-up game for the Syrian men’s team before their crucial World Cup qualifier against Uzbekistan.

As the secretary general of his country’s football federation, he has arguably the most difficult job in world football. It’s tough to organise friendly fixtures when you represent a country considered a pariah state by most of the international community.

Pacing around his office at the Syrian FA headquarters, cigarette hanging from his lip, he lists the excuses he’s been given and the tiny pool of teams who will take them on.

The Syrian FA headquarters conference room was hit by a mortar and in the corner of Kouteibah's office is a pane of shattered glass from the shrapnel.

“All of the countries we’ve contacted could not meet the dates we’ve got available.

“Iraq did offer us a friendly in Tehran but the dates didn’t work for us. This is the problem we are suffering in these years,” he says.

Finding a venue to play World Cup qualifying games was a similarly tough task given Syria’s inability to host teams because of security fears.

The Malaysian FA finally agreed, at the last minute, after a deal with Macau, a tiny territory known as the “Vegas of China”, fell through.

Macau had agreed to pay the Syrians $150,000 (£121,000) per ‘home’ game, tempted by the fact that China and South Korea were in their qualifying group. Hosting home games would see teams and fans visit, spending money in their hotels and casinos.

However, the sanctions Syria operates under meant the money couldn’t be internationally wired and a request to be paid in cash complicated matters to such an extent that the deal eventually collapsed. “Security concerns” were cited as the official reason.

No money is provided to them directly from either the world governing body Fifa or from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) because of sanctions.

And there’s hardly any money for salaries too.

However, the AFC has agreed to cover Syria’s hotels, air fares and other expenses from a pot of $2m (£1.6m) of subsidies owed to Syria for reaching this stage of World Cup qualification. It must be spent wisely given that home games currently involve a 9,000-mile round-trip to southeast Asia.

This is about more than money and politics though.

“We are trying our best to help the people, using football,” says Kouteibah.

Down the hallway from his office sits Fadi Dabbas, one of the leading directors of the Syrian FA.

When the question of politics, the war and sport is raised with him there is a tacit recognition too that they are inseparable.

“When a Syrian team is playing, the first thing in the match is the playing of the national anthem,” he says.

“Football is very important in politics. It gives the real image of Syria, that Syria is fine despite the war.

“Football and politics are related, we are representing a state and the Syrian team are from all shades of Syria and from all Syria.”

Fifa insists politics should play no part in football and therefore Syria are free to compete internationally providing they play on neutral ground.

The positive results against China and South Korea in their group came under such trying circumstances.

Assistant manager Tarek Jabban says he coaches for the love of his country. That is definitely a prerequisite given his monthly salary is just $100 (£80).

That’s despite Jabban being one of the most decorated players in Syrian football history. He spent his career with the leading Damascus club Al Jaish, winning the league on six occasions and the cup five times. He also played – and captained – his country close to 100 times.

At home in a Damascus suburb, with his wife and four daughters watching on, he reflects on how the team has performed recently.

His daughters have spent the afternoon baking a chocolate cake to welcome us to their home and Tarek hopes we will return if Syria takes the small chance they have to qualify for the World Cup.

The situation for Jabban is also difficult. Like so many in Syria he must deal with the consequences of the conflict, which includes a drastic limitation on electricity. Power outages are a daily occurrence and the city streets are plunged into darkness at night to conserve energy.

To ensure he can watch key games at home without interruption he uses a small TV powered by batteries.

“We try to stay optimistic all the time, despite all the difficulties we are facing," he says.
Now he must prepare his players for the game of their lives and he hopes his experience of playing in big matches will help.

He was part of the 1994 Syrian team that won the AFC Youth Championship, beating Japan 2-1 in the final.

Jabban has fond memories of being carried shoulder high by supporters as they arrived home with the cup.

Clutching the medal in his hand he recalls how they were met by 40,000 supporters on their return to Damascus airport.

“It is something I will never forget,” he says.

His neighbour then fulfilled a pre-tournament promise to carry him up 12 flights of stairs to the top of his parents’ apartment building if he won.

Jabban hides his medals well. As his prized possessions he is concerned they may be stolen. His six-year-old daughter Juri is therefore seeing her father’s huge haul for the very first time.

The taste of that 1994 win, and seeing what it meant to the people of his country, is something he wants his players to now experience too.

“We will do our best. After the first game we will know more if we are going to make the miracle happen and arrive at the World Cup,” he said.

The squad tasked with making miracles are well aware of the wider responsibilities on their shoulders.

At just 22 years old, Omar al Midani has more to worry about than just leading Syria’s defensive line.

The centre-half, who plays for the Damascus club Al Wahda, has featured 17 times for his country, scoring once. A tall, powerful player, his presence in Syria’s back line is a key factor in their recent success.

National players across the world often complain that the weight of expectation on their shoulders from the public to win can be too much at times.

In Syria, the situation is reversed. The players have taken on the task themselves of providing some respite from the war to their compatriots.

“Despite all the pain they are living in, the people are believing and supporting us all time,” says Midani.

“The minimum we can do is to give them joy for few hours, we ask God to help us to do that.”

Most players his age don’t have such things to occupy their minds. Omar has ambitions to play abroad and develop his career but as we watch Al Wahda’s youth team train he emphasises that such personal motivations are secondary while the war continues.

“The football was much better before the war. We were happy, the only thing we cared about was football and school. Now the only thing we care about is to have our country back like it used to be.”

That day may be some way off.

In the meantime all Kouteibah, Jabban and Midani can do is keep planning and playing.

The one common thread between Syrians, no matter if they are regime supporters or part of the opposition, is a love of their country.

That even extends to those we have spoken with who have lost family members or were forced to flee their homes in order to survive.

They all long for better days ahead.

One player who previously expressed negative opinions about the regime and was banned is returning to the national team.

Firas al Khatib, considered one of his country’s greatest ever players, declared support for the Syrian opposition in 2012 and hasn’t featured for the team since.

Now, following overtures from the head coach, he is returning and ready to play his part in trying to take Syria forward.

So a good news story around potential qualification for the World Cup is both a welcome distraction from the grind of wartime life and a way for Syrian patriotism to be expressed other than down the barrel of a gun.

If this team make it to Russia next summer then they can expect a lot more than the 40,000 who turned up to carry the victorious youth team shoulder high from the airport in 1994.

As assistant coach Tarek Jabban reflects, given the cash-strapped conditions under which they operate, the task at hand is not just one of making it to world football’s flagship tournament. It’s about producing a miracle.

Regardless of the eventual outcome, the excitement from this football adventure has given the Syrian government a PR boost – but it has also provided many things to its people including hope, escapism and pride.

Back in Malaysia - and settled in a new hotel - the squad are focused. In the old colonial town of Malacca - surrounded by palm trees and rubber plantations - they know what they must now do. Win.

Victory over Uzbekistan will give them renewed belief they can qualify for a regional play-off. Win that and they would then face an opponent from North or Central America or the Caribbean for a place in Russia. It is a high hurdle to clear.

In the end, World Cup qualification may well prove elusive but the achievements of this Syrian squad will be lauded given what they have had to overcome.

The points will soon be tallied and the end result will be known.

If only the same could be said for the war the Syrian people must endure and their country's long-term future.