Iraqis players are skilled but skinny, says Stange

Bernd Stange is the coach for the Iraqi national football squad - answerable to Saddam Hussein's son Uday - and is desperate to win them a place in the World Cup in Germany in 2006.

Now forced back to Germany by the threat of war, with his footballers mobilised in the Iraqi army, he has told French newspaper Liberation he fears that international politics will crush his dream of bringing an Iraqi squad to Germany.

"Iraq is a great footballing nation," says the former East German coach. "It's ranked 50th in the world, and only needs to climb a few places in the Asian qualifiers to get through. It would drive me mad if politics thwarted my plans."

I have worked for communist regimes, capitalists, for a sultanate, and now for a dictator. But it's only ever about one thing - getting the ball in the net Bernd Stange

But as politics encroached onto the pitch, he was told by the German ambassador to Baghdad to leave Iraq.

"I only wish that politics had rules as clear as those of football," he muses. "It's not a coincidence that Fifa has more members than the United Nations."

Stange speaks passionately about the level of enthusiasm for football he found in Iraq.

"Iraqi players are all little Zidanes," he tells Liberation. "They are very good technically. They love the ball. But they don't know about modern tactics - they are too isolated. And they're all in a poor state of fitness - they're all a bit thin."

"I show them pictures of Oliver Kahn and Zidane in slightly clingy shirts and say to them 'Do you think they got these biceps from eating good French cheese? No, they're from training. You have to train harder."

I show them pictures of Oliver Kahn and Zidane in slightly clingy shirts and say to them 'Do you think they got these biceps from eating good French cheese? No, they're from training' Bernd Stange

The pitches and kit, too, are out of condition - the result of sanctions.

"I didn't ever meet Saddam Hussein's son, but what I did find was pitches which were without fertiliser, because of the embargo."

The team doctor's case also told its own story.

"Inside, there were only herbal remedies. Not even any aspirin. No creams, no syringes. To treat the players, there was only water and ice," he says.

Stange was answerable to Saddam Hussein's son

"When you have an injured player, you need to get him on his feet again in two or three days. You can't work with players who are out for two or three weeks with the slightest injury."

The self-confessed former Stasi informant, who passed details of his footballing colleagues to the East German secret police, has found himself the subject of criticism for his latest ties.

Tabloid papers denounced him as "Saddam's lackey", whose studs were splashed with blood.

But football, he insists, is simply football, wherever in the world it is played.

"I have worked for communist regimes, capitalists, for a sultanate, and now for a dictator. But my work is always the same. It's only ever about one thing - getting the ball in the net."

They ring me every day and ask 'Coach, when are you coming back. We miss you' Bernd Stange

And anyway, he says, he gets far too bored at home pruning his roses and tending his lawn. The Iraqi job was simply a "good opportunity", a way out of small-town boredom in his eastern German home in Iena, where he had been unemployed for nine months before saying yes to Iraq.

In the meantime, Stange has resorted to a form of long-distance coaching to keep his players on course for that World Cup dream.

"They are still working to the training plan which I have given them," he says. "I have organised everything - training times, meal times.

"And they ring me every day and ask 'Coach, when are you coming back. We miss you.'"