It is one of sport’s most seductive scripts: Syria, that global reference point for the futility of war, stands today within two play-offs of reaching the 2018 World Cup. Out of the cinders of a savage conflict, and despite the depredations of a monstrous despot, a football team stands alone, undaunted, defiant.

Throw in a last-minute equaliser against Iran, a commentator in tears, photographs of rapt crowds in Damascus watching giant screens in an apparent cessation of hostilities, and you have the most poignant advert possible for football’s power to unite.

This, at least, is the Pravda version, the type of sanitised romance that Sepp Blatter would always be fond of spinning. The greatest trick that the old devil ever pulled was convincing the world that football could elevate itself from the political fray. It became, for hubristic purposes, his evangelical crusade. All it took was the introduction of a few 3G pitches in Palestine for him to presume that Fifa should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Syria’s journey to World Cup qualification is, by any gauge, improbable. Tarek Jabban, their assistant manager, earns £80 a week. Their five home games have all been staged 4,500 miles away in Malaysia, the one country who would host them despite international sanctions. Their domestic league has fractured, with games held only in government-controlled areas. And yet here they are, with a two-legged play-off against Australia and potentially one more against a Concacaf Confederation team lying between them and a first place in the finals. ​