Ex-Stasi informer plots downfall of England

The Belarus coach is coy about his Stasi past and aspects of his tenure in Iraq, but not about football, finds Jonathan Wilson

SOME PEOPLE try to avoid controversy; to others it seems as essential as water. Bernd Stange, former Stasi informer and one-time coach of Iraq, has long since given up caring what other people think. Whether he is being asked about his past in East Germany, about an unfortunate photograph taken in front of a mural of Saddam Hussein, or about his new job in Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship, his response is constant: "I am a football coach, not a politician."

And if coaches are to be judged merely on results, his record is highly impressive. In the 14 months since he stunned the usually imperturbable Belarusian press with a radical squad selection that discarded several established internationals in favour of younger players, he has become a hugely popular figure. He has led his new nation to victories over Israel and the Netherlands, and to draws against Turkey, Germany and Argentina. Take a point off England on Wednesday, and his cult status would be secure.

"I will never say we can beat England but what I can say is that England must be at their best against Belarus, and we can cause a big shock," he said. "We have a young team but we have some big experiences in the last year, against Germany, against Holland, and against Argentina. It was a big surprise that England were not in the European Championships, but the game of football is changing. Many strong nations are emerging all the time, and there are no guarantees for anybody. But England is one of the great football nations. It is a very big challenge for us."

Perhaps, but there are challenges and there are challenges, and Stange has overcome more testing hurdles in his time. He was born in Gnashwitz in the former East Germany and, after an unexceptional playing career, his promise as a coach became clear at Carl Zeiss Jena. He was moved to work with the national side, becoming manager in 1984. It was around that time that, perhaps understandably, Stange began working as Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter – an "unofficial employee" – of the Stasi, informing on the political views of players and highlighting any he thought might be tempted to defect. "What happened in East Germany is all in the past now," he said. "I'm a football coach. Not a politician."

Hertha Berlin didn't see it that way when his past came to light in 1992, though, and he left the club under a cloud. He returned to Jena, had stints with Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk and CSKA Kyiv in Ukraine, went to Australia, where he was so popular among Perth Glory fans that they took to the streets to demonstrate against his dismissal. Then it was on to Oman, where he had three months in charge of the national team, before, in 2002, he was offered the Iraq job. War was imminent but, unemployed, and with no other offers forthcoming, Stange accepted.

Conditions were all but impossible. "We sometimes had to sleep in airports because we had no money for accommodation," he said. "We had to train in the heat of the afternoon because you couldn't switch lights on in the evenings for security reasons. We were short of everything. Obviously we could not play home matches, and with 50,000 fans screaming for you in Baghdad usually that would be a guarantee of a home win.

"It was tough from a personal point of view as well. When I introduced weight training into the fitness regime for example, a lot of Iraqi coaches protested. They had never trained in that way and thought that I would damage their players. I had to show them a picture of Michael Ballack to show he did not get his muscles just from eating the right food."

And then, of course, there was the constant danger. "It may sound strange, but I never felt unsafe in Iraq," Stange insisted. "But my driver Said Tarek, who was a former Asian karate champion, was shot a few minutes after dropping me off at the Sheraton hotel one time. A bullet went through his hand."

Yet somehow, amid the chaos, he managed to put together a young side of great purpose and commitment. He finally decided the situation was untenable in 2004, a month before his former assistant, Adnan Hamad, led Iraq to the semi-finals of the Olympic football tournament. Three years later, Jorvan Vieira led them to victory in the Asian Cup, an achievement for which Hamad insists Stange laid the groundwork.

By then Stange was in Cyprus with Apollon Limassol before, in August last year, accepting an offer from the Belarusian Football Federation to replace Yuri Puntus. Conditions are far better than they were in Iraq, but still far from perfect. "In Belarus, we have good facilities with the Federation, good pitches and training sites, but the standard of the football league is not so good and the crowds quite low for a lot of matches," he said. "Many players go to other countries very young to earn better, and sometimes they leave too early which is a problem for the development."

The success of BATE Borisov in becoming the first Belarusian side to reach the group stage of the Champions League suggests that things are improving, and is an indication of the value of investing in academies, but Stange is at pains to underline how limited his resources are. These resources would be stretched further if Barcelona's former Arsenal midfielder Alexander Hleb fails to recover in time from his knee injury. "He is of course a very important player for Belarus and I made him our captain," said Stange. "But we are not only about Hleb. He has a big reputation in the world and he is a leader for us, but we are 11 players on the pitch, and we are not just about Hleb."

Given what he has faced before, though, dealing with the absence of a key player hardly seems a major difficulty.