See Syria's National Football Team Prepare in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - For the past six years the country has been ravaged by war and the stories that have been told are horrifying and dehumanising in equal measure.

Since the uprising began in 2011, there has been little positivity spoken in connection with the country, but then there is the remarkable story of Syria's national football team.

The relationship that exists between this national team and its people depicts the power of sport on a personal, cultural and political level. It goes to the heart of what makes sport matter.

For they dream, more than 4,500 miles away -in the lobby of a five-star Malaysian hotel south of Kuala Lumpur- a group of Syrian footballers await check-in.

Some are arguing demonstrably about Real Madrid - the names Zidane and Ronaldo mixing with their passionate Arabic. Others sit quietly on their mobile phones.

This is Syria's national football team and their presence here in Malaysia is the culmination of a journey travelled by more than just themselves and their team-mates.

In October last year, playing in a World Cup 2018 qualifier away from home in Beijing, this side representing their war-torn nation of 23m people beat China - a country of 1.4bn that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its president’s plan for footballing success. The players celebrated by going shopping with their win bonus.

This week, they are preparing to play Uzbekistan in arguably the most important game in their nation’s footballing history - and one that will make reaching the play-offs for a place at the World Cup in Russia next year a real possibility.

Win the game and they will earn a $1,000 (£800) bonus each, around a year’s wages for the average Syrian footballer and more money than most of the population can dream of in a country that has seen its currency devalue by around 1,000% since the start of the war.

So why Malaysia? Economic sanctions, as well as security fears, mean no games can take place inside Syria and they are forced to play their home fixtures at neutral venues in front of very few fans.

That is easier said than done when you are a state with very few friends on the global stage. They came within one day of forfeiting this World Cup campaign entirely, given a lack of viable hosts. It all serves to make their achievements all the more incredible.

Is there any other national team for whom a win and two draws in qualifying would not only mean so much but also be considered a great achievement?

A month before the victory against China, Syria drew against former World Cup semi-finalists South Korea. These results mean gradually, the footballing world is starting to pay attention to Syria for sporting reasons. But this is not entirely a good news story.

There is no ignoring the control that president Bashar Assad’s regime tries to exert over its citizens and, once again, sport is no different.

The relative success of the team is both a passing panacea and a propaganda opportunity, the former for the people and the latter for the president.

To present a thriving football culture to the world fits in entirely with the agenda of normalisation, of having quelled the rebellion, of stabilisation and control. However, as we discovered, the reality is far from that.

There is a privilege to being a sports journalist, reporting on some of the biggest sporting events and stories from around the world. Despite having more than 30 years experience between us this assignment was like no other and took us to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and finally Malaysia.

Ultimately, this is a story of 23 Syrian footballers, 23m Syrian people, 4.9m refugees, six years of war and one president.

For the national game, they should play out from country.

“We want our players to play outside Syria, we need our players to play outside Syria”.

There is perhaps no more telling indictment of the crisis in Syrian football than the national team's assistant coach actively encouraging their best players to leave the troubled country and play abroad.

Tarek Jabban not only coaches for his country, but was one of the most decorated footballers in Syrian league history. A player before the war, he knows better than most how far the national game has fallen since fighting began six years ago.

The league is in such a state of decay that players here do not have the support or the access to facilities that can be offered abroad.

Many already have left, and the majority of the 23 players who are in Malaysia this week are currently playing abroad, many of them star players including captain Ahmad Al Salih, who plays for Henan Jianye in China. Firas Al-Khatib one of the squads most experienced players plays for Al Kuwait.

Omar Kharbin is another to earn a fortune by Syrian standards playing for one of the Middle East’s most famous teams, Al-Hilal in Saudi Arabia. Arguably the best player still based in Syria is his cousin Osama Omari, he plays with Al-Wahda in Damascus, and is top scorer in the league.

Unlike the others, Omari has no option to move away. He was conscripted into the army and is on release to the Al-Wahda football club from the Ministry of Defence. Many left before the war and other young men, including Kharbin, avoided the draft by merit of being an only child.

As a result of the conflict, the league has shrunk geographically, with teams playing only in areas where government exerts control. Effectively the league has been centered around two major cities, Damascus and Latakia. But as the regime retook rebel-held areas in some of the places most devastated by the war, football has begun to expand again and in January of this year football returned to the city of Aleppo. Games are also played further south in Homs now.

The rapid return of football to these areas shows the government’s desire to use the game to display life as returning to normal and of the war as being won. What could be more normal than going to a football match?

But like the normality, this “growth” of the game is an illusion. The truth is that the league is in crisis.

Years of economic sanctions and a crash in the value of the Syrian pound have meant that there is no money in the league. There is no money in the Syrian FA which runs the league.