In the summer of 2003, Sporting Lisbon played Manchester United in an exhibition to inaugurate the Alvalade XXI Stadium.
A young winger dressed in green and white ran John O’Shea ragged. Immediately after losing 3-1, United players urged Sir Alex Ferguson to splash the cash on the young talent.
The Scottish manager was typically one step ahead — he had already agreed to sign the 17-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo the previous evening.
Boris Smiljanic remembers the match only too well. A former Swiss international defender, he was watching in his house in northern Switzerland and recalls being left speechless.
“This was Manchester United and Cristiano was treating them like they were small boys,” he said. “It was incredible to see a player like this.”
Eleven years later, in the autumn of 2014, Smiljanic, now Under-21 coach at Grasshoppers Zurich, was reminded of this otherwise meaningless match while watching the first training session of a player newly recruited by Michael Skibbe, the Swiss side’s head coach.
More football
• Thomas Woods: Barcelona, Rangers, Arsenal v Liverpool – The big weekend preview
• Diego Forlan: The teams, the fans, the figures – Premier League is back, and it is the best
Sherko Kareem, from Baghdad’s Al Shorta Sports Club, was an 18-year-old with a Ronaldo-style racing-stripe shaved into his head. He made Smiljanic’s heart beat faster.
“The first time I saw Sherko play, he had just arrived directly from Iraq and you would have thought he had played only on the streets: lots of trickery but no sense of where to be on the field,” recalled Smiljanic.
“He would get the ball and just start dribbling, running, sprinting. And not only for 20 or 30 yards; he was going from box to box with the ball stuck to his foot, through the entire team.
“It was incredible to see. Very strange, but very refreshing.”
Kareem has been in Rio de Janeiro for the past two weeks competing in the Olympic Games with the Iraqi U23 team.
Although Iraq failed to progress from their group, a goalless draw with Brazil in Brasilia showed that the young Iraqi with the lack of tactical awareness is learning.
He was surprisingly deployed on the right-side of midfield against a Brazilian side that includes Barcelona forward Neymar, and ordered to defend more than attack.
“Sherko is one of the most promising players in Iraq and because of his experience in the Swiss league, we know we can trust him to play in a different position,” Abdulghani Alghazali told The National after the match.
“We saw it work well; he showed he can also be a good support player, so it is something we can consider again in the future.”
It has always been about the future for Kareem. Born on May 25, 1996, during Iraq’s civil war, he started playing football on the dust-laden streets of his hometown, Kirkuk, before joining a local club, where he caught the eye of Muwafaq Zaidan, head coach of the national U17 side.
After moving south to Al Shorta, he was called upon by Zaidan for the 2013 Fifa U17 World Cup in the UAE.
Although Iraq lost all three of their group games, the winger showed plenty of promise and scored against Mexico in Al Ain.
He was named in The National’s team of the tournament and attracted the attention of Ajax, who invited him for a two-week trial, as well as Monaco.
“I want to play in Europe,” Kareem had said boldly after the tournament. “I can be an ambassador of football for Iraq, but mainly I want to challenge myself at the highest levels of my sport.”
A Tunisian scout living in Austria alerted Swiss side Grasshoppers Zurich to the availability of this lean, confident dribbler with electric pace and a tendency to drift in from the left flank.
The Swiss side were lacking a substantial transfer budget, so took a chance and offered the little-known Iraqi a permanent contract.
Shortly after he signed for a nominal fee, Swiss daily newspaper Tages Anzeiger described him as “fast, tricky and with a good eye for goal”.
It took only six months for Kareem to switch from training with Smiljanic’s U21s to playing for the first team.
“He was an exciting player to have in your team,” said Smiljanic. “Without the tactical schooling of Europe, but with a lot of passion, dribbling and a determination to score goals.
“He would always say ‘When I play with you, I want No 7 like Cristiano’.”
Kareem’s promotion to Skibbe’s first-team squad was not without its problems. As well as not having No 7, he initially struggled to settle and missed the familiarity of his teammates in the U21s.
He also no longer started matches, instead being reduced to a bit-part role. When he did feature, the need to make an impact weighed on his shoulders.
“It was very difficult to make the change from Iraq to Grasshoppers,” Kareem said. “Because, you know, Iraq has problems, the football is not so good there, but everything I have done in my life is to get to Europe so when I reached there I was not just going to throw it away.
“I am not ready to stop. I want to keep going until I reach the very top and I feel like I am improving.”
Smiljanic noticed a change in Kareem’s game, but not for the better.
Aware he was dealing with a fragile but very special talent, he decided to take action.
“After he reached the first team, he lost a little bit of his passion and speed. I could see he was not happy, so I took him back into the U21s,” Smiljanic said.
“We played the Fifa Youth Cup in May and there, he exploded again. I saw the old Sherko — he won the Golden Ball for best player at the tournament and scored the decisive goal in the final against West Ham.”
That was the momentum Kareem was riding when he arrived in Brazil last month.
He was being tipped to impact the tournament and would enjoy the opportunity to play against Neymar.
“Sherko is pure talent,” Gonzalo Rodriguez, the Olympic side’s fitness coach, said.
“He is still young and has to keep improving, but he can be a really top player.”
The step-up to Olympics football did not go to plan. The now 20-year-old showed glimpses of good feet and pace in Iraq’s opening match against Denmark, but he was guilty of a tame shot at goal after working an opportunity.
Against Brazil, he was a peripheral figure, his attacking threat limited to a few step-overs and a back-heel. And by the final match against South Africa, he had to make do with only a 30-minute cameo — although still managed to find space in a crowed area to get a shot away.
“In the match with Brazil, I could hear the fans cheering when I did the step-overs,” Kareem said. “That is what I love about football; making people enjoy the game.
“I wanted to make a show, but Brazil is obviously a very good team so I could not be too offensive.”
Smiljanic said he was surprised to see Kareem being played on the right side and given defensive responsibilities.
“Tracking back is not his game at all; his game is ‘give me the ball and I will go through the defence’,” he said. “He drifts all over the field, but he is so special, so explosive, that you have to give him that freedom.”
With Kareem’s attention now able to turn back to furthering his domestic career, there have been murmurings that he might be seeking a transfer away from Zurich. Smiljanic urges him to stay put.
“Sherko is a showman, but first you have to be a big name in Switzerland before you can be a big name elsewhere.
“He is like Cristiano in his early days: He gets the ball, he jokes with the defender and he scores spectacular goals. When he does this, his future can take him anywhere, but for now he just needs to get as much experience as possible.”
The Olympics are over for Sherko Kareem, but the adventure will serve him well.
And having already been called up to the full Iraqi national team, the wait to again catch sight of a young winger dressed in green and white running a full-back ragged might not be too long.
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/TheNationalSport
