Iraq National Football Team

Iraq's 2026 World Cup qualification, their first in 40 years, is one of the most significant footballing stories of the modern Middle East. The Iraq Football Association was founded in 1948 and the Lions of Mesopotamia have spent most of their existence playing competitive football in conditions no other AFC member federation has faced — the Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion and subsequent insurgency, and continuing security challenges that have forced the senior team to play 'home' matches in Jordan, Qatar and Iran for much of the past 25 years. The 2007 AFC Asian Cup, hosted across four Southeast Asian nations and won by Iraq in a tournament played at the height of the country's civil war, remains the most emotionally significant title in Middle Eastern football. Younis Mahmoud's header against Saudi Arabia in the final secured a 1-0 win and is widely considered, alongside Iceland's 2016 Euro quarter-final run, the most romantic continental tournament triumph of the modern era. The Iraqi celebration in Karbala, Baghdad and Basra in the days after the final was the single most unified public moment the country experienced during the war years. Graham Arnold, the Australian coach who managed Australia's 2022 World Cup campaign, was appointed head coach in May 2025 after Jesús Casas's exit following Iraq's failure to top the AFC Third Round group. Captain Jalal Hassan is the long-serving goalkeeper. The squad combines veteran goalkeeper-captain Hassan with younger talent — Ali Al-Hamadi (Watford), Bashar Resan (Sharjah), Mohanad Ali (Al-Shorta), and 22-year-old breakout creative attacker Zidane Iqbal (the Manchester United youth product now at Utrecht). Iraq enter the World Cup with the squad depth of a serious AFC contender.

Iraq's 1986 World Cup debut in Mexico, played in the immediate aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War's bloodiest year, produced three group-stage defeats but represented the institutional achievement of the federation. The Lions of Mesopotamia, coached by Brazilian Evaristo de Macedo, lost 1-0 to Paraguay, 2-1 to Belgium and 1-0 to host nation Mexico. Ahmed Radhi's 65th-minute goal against Belgium on 8 June 1986 remains, until 2026, Iraq's only World Cup goal in tournament history. Younis Mahmoud's 71st-minute header against Saudi Arabia at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Jakarta on 29 July 2007 — converting Hawar Mulla Mohammed's corner — sealed Iraq's first and only AFC Asian Cup title. The match was preceded by car-bomb attacks in Baghdad targeting Iraqis celebrating earlier in the tournament, and the title-clinching moment is widely cited as the unifying public moment of post-2003 Iraqi life. President Jalal Talabani declared a public holiday in response. Ali Al-Hamadi's brace at the AT&T Stadium on 24 March 2026 — scoring twice against Bolivia in the inter-confederation playoff to seal World Cup qualification — was the moment Iraqi football crossed back into the World Cup fold after 40 years. The 22-year-old Watford striker, born in Coventry to Iraqi refugee parents, scored the first goal in the 31st minute and the eventual match-winner in the 78th. The post-match scenes in Arlington, where an estimated 18,000 of the 21,000 capacity were Iraqi-American or Iraqi diaspora, were the first time most younger Iraqis had ever seen a senior football crowd of that scale.