Graham Arnold

They got rid of everyone.

The medical staff, the medical staff, the backroom staff, the kit man, you name it, media staff, they got rid of the lot.

So within 10 days I had to replace about 24 staff members.

Yeah, but how do you speak Arabic?

Yeah, so it was chaos right from the start and, yeah,

And I was able to get in the technical staff here from Australia as well as René Molenstein, who I had with the Socceroos.

And then I added the – sorry, the president, Adnan, did a great job in adding a medical staff from Aspita in – Aspire in Qatar.

Yep.

So they could speak Arabic as well as English, which was fantastic.

And then, you know, then we filled the backroom staff.

But it was, you know, right from the start it was chaos.

But as I said, it was a challenge and I've been really proud of what the boys have done.

Yeah, the family, I have to say my wife Sarah was very, very supportive because obviously she knew how much I was missing working.

The kids were, and my brother and that, they were all supportive.

I think they were a bit concerned about me living there.

Yep.

But from day one I was living there, I felt safe.

And, you know, they've improved the country enormously, as you said.

I am going to give it a, you know, I think there is a lot of misperception in the Western world about Iraq as a country.

And, you know, if I told you, like, it was only two months ago, I was up the north of Iraq with high mountains and everything and snow on top of the mountains, people would be thinking, hang on, mountains in Iraq?