Graham Arnold

If you have any issues, please come and talk.

And I have to say, Howie,

You know, they have really taken to that.

And now, today, all the players will be waiting for me to come to breakfast, lunch or dinner or meetings.

And they're all sitting outside waiting as a group.

As soon as I walk in, they all walk in behind me.

And, you know, as I said, they've done exceptionally well.

Yeah, no, we had a pre-camp and just got to say probably 60% of the team is Iraqi locals.

And the other 40% are out of Iraq that live in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and that from when their parents left as kids when the wars broke out.

And they've come back to play for Iraq to do their parents proud.

But the first game, obviously, we could have a pre-camp and we had South Korea as obviously the opponent.

23 minutes into the game, our striker Ali Al-Hamadi got sent off.

So we had 10 men for 60 minutes and we got to 65 before South Korea scored.

And it was a game we had to win to get direct qualification.

So...

But the boys did very well.

And I changed the way that they played, especially defensively because there was always too much space between the lines and South Korea would kill you if you played like that.

And they did a good job with 10 men.

But then, you know, after the game and everything, you could tell by the emotion of the Iraqi fans, you know, the pressure that

they put on the players because the players don't have a social life because they're the heroes or the potential heroes in Iraq that, you know, the players took that stress, I think, that first game, the short turnaround with me, I think they took a bit of stress onto the field but also a little bit because I changed a little bit the way that they defended with them on the pitch and then from then on we've done exceptionally well.