EVERY other night, the sky over Baghdad erupts in deafening noise and colour. Red tracer bullets streak in the dark as the city reverberates with gunfire.

But for once Iraqis are celebrating, not fighting. In the midst of the uprisings and bombings, the national football team has proved one of the sensations of the Athens Olympics. If the ‘Team of the Future’, as it is dubbed, beats Paraguay in tonight’s semifinals, Iraq will win its first Olympic medal — a silver at least — since Aziz Addel Wahid took a bronze for weightlifting in 1960.

The team’s unprecedented successes against Portugal, the European champions, Costa Rica and Australia has thrilled this football-loving nation. The young team — only three players are over 23 — has captured the imagination and breathed new hope into the traumatised country.

Sunnis, Shias and Kurds sit glued to every game. The team’s triumphs have replaced the iniquities of the occupation as the favourite topic of conversation. Even the fighting in Najaf appears to die down when Iraq is playing.

“It’s like light at the end of the tunnel,” said Abbas Hamid, a student and — like most of the team — a Shia. “There’s a connection between politics and football. In politics it’s the occupation. But when the team wins we feel liberated.” The team has overcome overwhelming odds. Saddam Hussein’s younger son Uday, who once led the Iraqi Olympic Committee, used to beat up losing players, lock them up or shave their heads. Fortunately almost all the team were too young to experience his cruelty.

After the war the American Army occupied the main Shaab stadium in Baghdad, churning up the pitch with tracked vehicles. The team had to share the grounds of a local Baghdad club to practise, and moved to Jordan and Syria to train for last year’s Asian Cup where they first showed their mettle in matches against Saudi Arabia and North Korea — the latter match jokingly nicknamed the Axis of Evil tournament.

Preparing overseas for the Olympics, they watched on TV as their hometowns — Fallujah, Sadr City, Karbala or Najaf — burned. But the challenge of the game kept the players going and some have used their new-found celebrity to intervene in the turmoil at home.

Imad Mohammed, the star midfielder from the Shia holy city of Karbala who clinched Saturday’s quarter-final victory against Australia with the game’s only goal, has called for all foreign forces to leave Iraq.

Ahmed Munajid, a striker from the rebellious Sunni town of Fallujah, said that were it not for the Olympics he would be shooting bullets. “I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?” he asks. Players are furious that President Bush is airing election advertisements in America touting Iraq’s presence at the Olympics as vindication for the invasion.

“Iraq as a team does not want Mr Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself,” said Salih Sadir, a midfield player from Najaf.

According to Qassem Hanoun, a sports writer with the Iraqi newspaper AlAzzaman, much of the team’s success is down to the coach, Adnan Hamid, who has been with the players since they started in the junior league. He has played an almost fatherly role and helped his young charges survive the hard times.

“They’ve been together a long time. And it’s the spirit of challenge and persistence, and the will to make the nation happy,” said Mr Hanoun.

The absence of fear is another reason, says Tiras Odisho Anwaya, director-general of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee. During the team’s victory over Portugal, Haider Jabar, a defender, scored an own goal that would have landed him in serious trouble during the Saddam era. “The main reason for our good performance now is that they are playing without fear,” said Mr Anwaya. “Now a player can shoot at a goal and miss without being afraid.”

With their weightlifters, swimmers and judo teams already out, Iraq’s hopes are riding on the team, whose victory against Portugal was the best result ever for an Iraqi team against a European line-up. The team’s meteoric rise is an extra boost for Iraq’s Shia majority, against whom Saddam Hussein bore a particularly brutal grudge. But as with many sports, the poverty in which they lived has inspired many a young Shia to seek his way out of the slum through athletic achievement. Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric, is also a breeding ground for sporting talent.

With the chance of a medal in Athens, the players are also hoping for a new lease of life in clubs in Asia and Europe, with the big money that comes with it.

But for the rest of Iraq the hope is that tonight they will be reaching for their Kalashnikovs at midnight to light up the sky in celebration.