Graham Arnold

I will say it's the only country I've been in where, you know, because of the heat, they kick off at 11pm and finish at 1am.

I say this is the only country in the world I've ever been where you kick off one day and finish the next.

Yeah, yes, and I was very fortunate that pretty much the day I got there and it was announced that I was a coach, I got a random phone call on an Australian number on my Australian phone and it was from Ali Abbas.

Now, people who remember Ali Abbas or don't remember him are

I coached him at Sydney FC in 2015, and obviously he's Iraqi and he was back in Baghdad after the death of his father.

because he was living in Sydney, and we had a catch-up and a chat about what he was doing, and I convinced the president, Adnan, to give him the interpreter's role because I coached him.

He understood the way I was as a person but also what I expected and what I wanted, so he understood exactly what I was saying, and he's done a fantastic job right from day one, and honestly, how are we without him?

We wouldn't be where we are today because the hardest problem, as you said, was the language barrier.

And I'm very big on understanding the human being as well as not just a footballer because, you know, if they've got an issue in their personal life,

You know, I want them to tell me because I can see if their energy levels are down or if they're, you know, they've got, you know, you can see that they're not right, that we can talk about it.

But when I can do that in English one-on-one, but then when you've got to do it two-on-one with the interpreter, the player has to trust him.

So Ali has done a fantastic job.

But day one, it was before we played South Korea,

And I did an introduction presentation to the players of who the staff were, where they came from, what they had achieved and what my expectations were to qualify for a World Cup.

But the best thing happened.

Meeting was at 1pm and five of the senior players turned up at 20 past one.

So...

20 minutes late.

And in the past, apparently, the coach before and that, if someone was late, he just got on with a meeting and just left them out and then explained it to them or did it later.

And with three, four, five players.