Reuters, UK
Jan 2 2005
World’s Assyrians savour Swedish soccer saga
By Daniel Frykholm
SODERTALJE, Sweden (Reuters) – Swedish football team Assyriska is a
household name for Assyrians around the world.
So when it played for a spot in Sweden’s premier division, Ninos
Gawrieh and some 30 friends huddled around a television in a house in
the Syrian town of Kamishly, cheering it on.
Thousands of other people around the world were also watching the
game, hoping that the team would cap its 30-year history with
promotion and a hint of glory for the scattered minority whose name
it carries, the Assyrians.
“Assyriska feels like a national team for the entire group,” said
club chairman Zeki Bisso.
“For all of us who were oppressed in our home countries for many
years … this felt superb, it was something every Assyrian wanted to
take pride in,” he told Reuters.
A Christian minority from the historical region of Mesopotamia
between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in the Middle East, the
Assyrians have never had a state of their own, living mainly in
Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
They say hundreds of thousands of their forebears were killed in the
Turkish Ottoman Empire during World War One, alongside 1.5 million
Armenians and other Christian minorities. Turkey denies accusations
of genocide.
Assyrians have spread across the globe since, although many still
live in Iraq and Syria. Researchers say the current number is
unclear, possibly between one and two million.
“There has been quite a lot of confusion and loss of identity, which
makes this football club something that is finally positive and
uniting,” said David Gaunt, a history professor at Sodertorn
University College in Stockholm.
BY A HAIR’S BREADTH…
Assyriska was formed in 1974 as part of a club for a growing number
of Assyrians who had moved to Sodertalje in central Sweden.
It has come a long way from the 1975 season when it failed to notch
up a single point in the country’s seventh division and was outscored
by 101 goals to 11.
It clinched its premier league place after a nail-biting season,
which finished with a twist.
Assyriska lost its chance for a top spot when rivals Orgryte scored a
winning goal in extra time in the second of two legs of a play-off.
“Everybody was so depressed, they were crying. They reacted even
stronger than me, and I come from here!” said Gawrieh, a Sodertalje
resident who was visiting Kamishly at the time of the Orgryte match.
A day later, the Swedish Football Association gave Assyriska a
premier league place after all when it relegated another top division
club, Orebro, because of poor finances.
“At that moment we just felt such enormous joy, I figured everybody
in the world is Assyrian now, even God is Assyrian, or at least a
supporter,” said Robil Haidari, the club’s marketing director.
“People rushed to the club house and in a matter of minutes we had
hundreds of people here celebrating.”
WORLDWIDE FOLLOWING
Assyrians around the world can follow Assyriska’s games on the newly
established satellite television channel, Suroyo-tv, which broadcast
the Orgryte matches to 82 countries, including North America.
Busloads of fans from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands attended
the game.
“Assyriska is very well known and adored by Assyrian fans throughout
the United States and Canada,” Firas Jatou, an Assyrian living in
California, told Reuters by e-mail.
“Here on the west coast, it would be very difficult to find any
Assyrian American who is not aware of Assyriska,” he added.
Assyriska will get no free ride in the 2005 premier league season,
which kicks off in April.
“My bet is they’ll end in the 10th spot (of 14). Anything higher is
unrealistic,” said Jan Majlard, soccer reporter and commentator at
the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.
“They already have the technical skills, now they need to develop the
physical side. It seems that Assyriska will be the team to follow
this season and it will be fun to see if they are able to keep their
playfulness and bohemian style,” he added.