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Baghdad. Iraq’s national football team has certainly endured hardship. Saddam Hussein had players beaten after losses. And the war that deposed him forced them into exile after extremists started killing sports figures. Their first game at home in years was just this summer — against the Palestinians, the only team willing to come here during a war.

Through it all, the team continued to compete internationally.

Now that may be at an end. The world football governing body, FIFA, suspended Iraq’s football team on Friday, charging the government with interference in the affairs of the board that oversees the national team.

It started when the Iraqi Football Association said it was too dangerous to hold elections in Iraq for its governing board, and FIFA granted it an extension. The government wanted elections immediately, and disbanded the local association, leading to the FIFA suspension.

Some Iraqi officials complain that the football association is still tainted by its old relationship with one of Saddam’s sons, Uday, who once ruled Iraqi sports with an iron hand and a foul temper.

The disagreement is also about how Iraq’s leaders want their country to be perceived internationally. It is hard to persuade investors to spend their money here if even the country’s football association declares it too dangerous to do so.

Iraq’s football team, like the country, has huge natural resources that are greatly under-exploited. This year the team failed to qualify for the World Cup, even after investing in a prominent new Serbian coach, Bora Milutinovic, who previously took five other teams to the World Cup, including the US.

Yet during the darkest days of the war in 2007, the Iraqi team won the prestigious Asian Cup, earning the nickname of the Lions of Mesopotamia. That victory provoked a bacchanal of celebratory gunfire that sent the US military on high alert, until it realized the gunfire was not some Tet-style offensive by the insurgents.

Football is so beloved here. Matches in Iraq are one of the few types of public gatherings that have never become a target for suicide bombers.

Younis Mahmoud, the team’s star striker, is a Sunni from the disputed province of Kirkuk, where Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds are still at war. With a tattooed map of Iraq on his left arm and an aggressive, unstoppable style of attack that has earned him the nickname “the butcher,” Mahmoud is a hero to all Iraqis (even though, like the leaders of the football association, he refused in recent years to return to Iraq out of fear for his life).

The passion of Iraqi fans runs high even by international football standards. This year, in Hilla, south of Baghdad, the goalie of the winning team in a local match was killed by a policeman — not out of anger, it turned out. In his excitement, the officer lost control of his gun.

At the center of the controversy with FIFA is Hussein Saeed, who heads the IFA, from his base in Amman, Jordan or, say some, from London.

Saeed, a popular former team captain, was active in the football association when sports in Iraq were run by Uday Hussein, who was killed in 2003. Saeed’s critics say that made him an accessory to the torture of sports figures; his supporters say that, like all of Iraq’s athletes, he had no option.

Saeed dismisses the accusations. “They are all lies and fabrications,” he said in an interview last week. “These people should not use terroristic methods against the athletes.”

He also disputes government complaints that the football association has remained in exile. He said the group’s leaders often visited Kurdistan in the north and Babel province in the south, both safe compared with Baghdad.

No one blames the football team for these disputes. After the team’s Asian Cup victory, government officials showered it with presents, including diplomatic passports and gifts of $10,000, given out by the prime minister to each player. The team’s poor showing this year, though, made it easier politically for the government to move against the football association, which controls the team and its finances.

During the days of Uday Hussein’s stranglehold on Iraqi sports, “There was lots of psychological pressure on the players, which was really effective,” said a former football player, Ahmed Radhi, who heads the Sports and Youth Committee in Parliament. “Now the players suffer from the same pressure due to the interference of politicians, so nothing much has changed.”

The football season is currently in a three-month hiatus, and Sameer Sadeq al Mosawy, an officer of the government-supported Iraqi Olympic Committee, said he expected the country to successfully appeal any suspension by FIFA before the next match.

“We hope we can come out of this fight without any losers,” he said.

Al-Mosawy denied that the actions of his committee, which oversees all of Iraq’s sporting federations, had anything to do with politics or anyone’s past deeds. “This is democracy,” he said.

That may be so, said Abdul Qadir Zainal, a former Iraqi football player turned sports commentator, but such democracy does not always make for a beautiful game.

“In the last 35 years of Iraqi football, we never had a problem this serious,” Zainal said. “Now I really fear for the future of Iraqi football.”

The New York Times