'Medicine to unite souls' - Libya coach Micho aims to inspire nation with football success

Two years and five days from now the curtain will rise in Mexico City on the biggest and most inclusive World Cup that football has ever staged.

Invitations will be extended to 45 nations besides co-hosts: the USA, Canada and Mexico. It is guaranteed there will be debutants, new countries, taking part at the sport’s great showpiece.

Among them, or so they dream, might just be North Africa’s sleeping giant, the one Mediterranean nation from Africa never to have made it to a World Cup finals.

Right now, Libya are showing the sort of form all their near neighbours would envy. A sample of the last five international matches played by Morocco, semi-finalists at the 2022 World Cup, Tunisia, Algeria and Mohamed Salah’s Egypt has none of those heavyweights as potent as Libya, with their dozen goals from five games so far in 2024, extending an unbeaten run that stretches back over 11 games.

Beat Mauritius in Benghazi on Thursday, and a belief that Libya’s renaissance could lead them to North America in the summer of 2026 will grow.

Quite a renaissance it has been, too. This time a year ago, Libya, the so-called ‘Knights of the Mediterranean’, were on their way to finishing bottom of their qualifying pool for the last Africa Cup of Nations. They were under the care of a third different head coach in as many months.

The Libyan Football Federation then reached out to an old Africa hand, the Serbian coach Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojevic to take over. His 22 years managing in Africa, an odyssey taking in trophy success at Egypt’s Zamalek and Sudan’s Al Hilal, plus two spells at South African giants Orlando Pirates and jobs in charge of three different national teams, meant he needed no reminding of Libyan football’s potential. Nor that