Iraq 's the Champ

Forget Zidane's head butt at the World Cup Finale or that MYTEAM is starting its second season with a surreal ambition to thrash Indonesian team this October. Right now, its all about IRAQ.

With almost EVERY single player polished their soccer skills with the Arab Soccer League, away from their homeland, with every single player having to balance both the grief over losing their family members in the war and also the pressure on the field to grab the AFC Cup, Iraq showed potential which put other Asian countries in the competition to shame.

As other countries showed either brilliant improvement over the years (Vietnam seemed to play better soccer than US) or consistency (Saudi Arabia in the Finals again? Yawn!) in the AFC, Malaysia is anything but improvement (Well, you could say they are consistent in losing matches). Want to blame the coach? Oh, c'mon, does this mean if only we could afford Pele or Maradona, then would we be up for a good Malaysian soccer team? We ditched Viera who used to trained our youth players and look who has the last laugh.

Another funny part about the live telecast yesterday is how our commentators were not able to put Iraq's victory into perspective. I remember one of them saying" Kalau Iraq boleh memperbaiki mutu bola sepak mereka, mengapa tidak mereka memperbaiki pentadbiran mereka?" Doh !

Well, congrats to Iraq and yes, I am still pregnant.