FED UP WITH BEING CAST AS football’s pariah, Bernd Stange, the indefatigable Iraq coach, is enjoying the novelty of every leading figure in the game suddenly wanting to be his best friend. By his own admission he is not the stuff of celebrity, nor does he crave it. A tall, angular man, fastidious in his appearance and with white receding hair, he is a bit like Sven Göran-Eriksson without the rimless spectacles and the sex appeal.

He tells you that he has no desire to emulate his old friend Sven in the gossip columns but is hopeful that the England head coach may be among those offering a helping hand. Stange and Iraq’s reintroduction to the international fold came in Tehran, of all places, in what was billed last month as a Peace Tournament, where they beat Iran, the old enemy, in a match laden with obvious significance. They then got thumped by Uruguay.

There aren’t many managers who say that results don’t matter and truly mean it. “Just being there, playing again, was so important for my players, who have been out in the cold for so long,” he said. There are plenty more invitations for football’s outcasts, with an Asian Cup gathering in Malaysia in October and dates pencilled in the diary from his former employers in Perth and his native Germany.

Berti Vogts, another old playing comrade, fancies a game, which may not be his wisest move as Iraq, even in their parlous state, are higher in the Fifa rankings than Scotland. British diplomats in Baghdad were so charmed when Stange turned up at their makeshift embassy that they filed off a begging letter to the FA on his behalf. David Davies, director of football affairs at Soho Square, is desperate to oblige but it clearly is not feasible to take an England team to Basra or Baghdad at present. Davies said: “We are in close touch with the Foreign Office and others and we are really keen to do something, anything we can.”

Shorn of the damaging patronage of Saddam Hussein’s psychotic son, Uday, the Iraq FA now finds itself smothered by goodwill from international bodies. The International Olympic Committee has given special dispensation for them to catch up in the qualifying tournament, beginning this month with two games against Vietnam. They still cannot play at home, although this is for practical reasons.

Stange’s main gripe is that the pitch is unplayable as it was used as a US tank depot until a few weeks ago. He wants the Americans to make amends. “I won’t call them bad boys in public until I’ve spoken to them, but you would think they would have repaired the stadium before they gave it back to us,” he said.

He does not apologise for his anti-war sentiments, although he concedes that, at 55, he can still be “naive”. No more so than when he took the Iraq job in November 2002 and was duped by a photographer into posing in front of a portrait of Saddam. Headlines in the German tabloids branded him “a traitor”. All that unpleasantness is obviously forgotten as the German FA has been in touch to say that if the Iraqis can’t pay his wages, they will.

“The funny thing is I am not doing anything different now to back then when I was portrayed as a criminal,” he said. “I wasn’t here supporting Saddam’s regime. I wanted to make my players better footballers. This war destroyed football. Of course, there are many things much more important than soccer. Iraq needs water, medicines, new hospitals but never underestimate how much football means to Iraqis.”

He delights in describing how more than 150 journalists showed up for his first press conference back in Iraq. The next day, barely 30 turned up at the same venue to hear some of the world’s leading human rights campaigners.

An engaging figure, he is far more animated than the “genius Sven”, whom he befriended in Norway 30 years ago. Tapping his tanned forehead, he said: “I still keep Sven’s ideas, he is among the very best. I would love to play England. My players dream of it and what is good now is that we are allowed to dream.” He describes himself as a football gypsy. He managed teams in East Germany, where he was born, and their national team before reunification, then coached in Australia and the Gulf.

He knew the risks of moving to Baghdad but said that Iraq were the best team in Asia, better than South Korea and Japan, and “selfishly, I saw the chance to finish my career by taking a team to the 2006 World Cup finals in my home country, Germany. I didn’t see it as bolstering the regime”. The war and its continuing legacy, he concedes, makes an appearance in Germany unlikely, but he said:

“We’ll try damn hard but we are starting again from scratch.”

Late evening, the temperature still well over 100F, and in the dilapidated stadium of the Khurk club in Baghdad, he is cajoling the national squad on what he calls “a bloody goatfield. You wouldn’t graze beasts on it, but this is what we train on”. There is a dribble of automatic gunfire from nearby but no one on the pitch flinches. Whether the shooting is from a wedding party or something more malign is impossible to say, but it is not allowed to interrupt Stange’s regimented schedule.

He aims to have Iraq’s professional league — two divisions of 20 teams — up and running by October. The best of Iraq’s players used to earn $250 (about £158) a month, but then surgeons were only getting $25. Stange has not been paid since February but he doesn’t care. “I just want to give these players a chance to reach the World Cup finals,” he said.

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