Ali Baba's Book Series on: Artistic Flags - Book Four: A Pictorial Tribute to Over 70 Countries for Their Appearance (s) in the FIFA World Cup Tournaments

I depict the flags of different countries as a way to express my appreciation and respect to all nations. Also by drawing flags I convey my wishes, hopes and dreams for achieving friendship and cooperation among all nations. This has been the trend for all the books in the Ali Baba's book series.

In this book, I am using the game of football (soccer) to make my point. It is truly a miracle as how football has served as a conduit for so many years in bringing people across the globe together. Football exemplifies as how different nations could overcome their differences and compete peacefully with one another and at the end gather in one place to celebrate their accomplishments. In the recent cycles of World Cup tournaments at least 200 countries have taken on the tough task of qualifying games every four years. Considering that there are very limited spots for the finalists, the enormity of these competitions become more evident. At the end, only one country takes the gold trophy and becomes the world championship. Despite all these hard works and the apparent heartbreaks, all the nations come back every four years more motivated than ever to give their best with the hope of capturing the glory of championship. Thus, I would like to highlight the tremendous efforts put forward by all nations to make FIFA World Cup tournaments possible.

Perhaps many of us do not realize as how much sacrifices these young players make to proudly display their national flags side by side with other nations during the World Cup tournaments. Examining the list of qualifying games reveals a vast array of differences among the competing teams. Sometimes the richest country goes face to face against the poorest nation; sometimes the smallest country goes head to head with the largest country. However, these disparities have not deterred these young athletes from giving their best. Thus, I am honoring all the countries that have ever participated in the qualifying games and appeared in the World Cup Tournaments throughout the history. I feel I am obligated to depict their beautiful flags to simply thank them for creating so many beautiful, unforgettable and everlasting memories.

In this book, all the finalists over the years are represented in alphabetical order and not in the order of highest to lowest trophy winners. The goal is to celebrate the great victory of those teams that could make it to the rank of the finalists in the FIFA World Cup tournaments. Of course, the bigger goal is to celebrate their much greater victory in bringing people across all continents together.

I would like to depict a different style of flags in each book. Thus I have decided to use fleece and embroidery in place of brush and paint in this book. Since these book series represent the artistic flags, as such the flags are not drawn to their standard dimensions. The emblems have either been symbolically replaced by other figures or been eliminated.