The game was initially meant to take place on Saturday, but was moved to Sunday and then to Monday evening amid contrasting reasons forwarded by the Iraqi Football Association (FA) officials and the match agent, SGM.Zebras' welfare manager Patrick Zibochwa told Mmegi Sport in a telephone interview from Turkey that the agent was nowhere to be seen when the team arrived in Turkey on Saturday. He said they proceeded to the training facility and were only told later by officials from the Iraqi FA that they could not play on Saturday because there was another friendly match between Turkey and Finland on the same day.
According to FIFA regulations, a country cannot host two international friendly matches on the same day. Zibochwa said they were surprised when they got to their hotel to see a live televised match between Turkey and Finland played elsewhere. However, Turkey FA does not report anything on the Finland match. The last friendly game Turkey played was a 3-1 win over Georgia last week Thursday. Zibochwa said the agent only arrived on Sunday and they had a meeting the same night where he told them that he felt they would be too fatigued to play on Sunday, hence he postponed the match to Monday. This was contrary to the reasons given by the Iraqi FA officials. Zibochwa said prior to the Sunday meeting, they had not heard anything from the agent regarding the postponements. "He did not inform the coach nor anyone in the technical team or the BFA, we still do not know why," Zibochwa said. Iraqi media reported the game was postponed due to administrative reasons as Iran was playing Albania in Istanbul on Sunday. Records of this match are shown on the FIFA website. "The reason for the postponement is that the stadium in Istanbul hosts another friendly match between Iran and Albania, and according to FIFA regulations two friendly matches cannot be held in one day in the same country," a member of the Iraqi FA, Mohammed Khalil, was quoted by the Kurdistan News. Meanwhile, the postponements have already affected the Zebras programme as they were scheduled to leave Turkey for the Central Africa Republic (CAR) yesterday. The Zebras take on CAR on Saturday (June 2) in their first leg match of the FIFA 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
