Iraqi soccer team wins again

Boston.com

Instead of playing for their lives under a torturous regime, Iraq's soccer vagabonds played as though they had the time of their lives last night. Pushing the play relentlessly in front of a delirious partisan crowd, the driven Iraqis struck for a pair of second-half goals to keep their fairy-tale Olympic odyssey alive with a 2-0 thumping of Costa Rica.

The article also talks about the sad status of Iraqi soccer under Uday Hussein.

The match clearly was much more than a game to the Iraqis, who for years fielded one of the best squads in the Middle East before Uday Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein's two sons, gave a cruel new meaning to taking one for the team. After a 1997 loss to Kazakhstan in a World Cup qualifying game, for example, the players were badly caned on the soles of their feet. On another occasion, defeated players were dragged on the pavement until their skin became raw and then were forced to leap into raw sewage. Such was the unhealthy life of an Iraqi soccer player.

Nabil is celebrating as well.