2026 World Cup Team Chronicle·Iraq: twenty-one matches on the road, forty years of waiting

Some teams reach the World Cup like boarding a plane. Iraq did not.

They walked a long road. FIFA counted 21 qualifying matches for this 2026 return. On paper it is a number. On bodies it is flights, hotels, buses, injuries, bans, stoppage time, penalties, bags opened and closed again.

Iraq's last World Cup was 1986 in Mexico. Hussein Saeed and Ahmed Radhi were there. Three defeats, but they had reached the big table. Then came forty years of seeing the light without touching the door.

A country can live too much history in forty years. War, sanctions, exile, rebuilding, stadiums filling again. Football cannot fix that. It can only do a smaller thing: give strangers one direction to look at for a night.

The final playoff in Mexico made the circle strange. Iraq beat Bolivia 2-1 and booked the ticket back in the same country where their first World Cup had happened. Like seeing an old station sign after half a lifetime.

Aymen Hussein is the face of this team: tall, hard, willing to throw himself between center-backs. Ali Jasim brings another light, younger and more daring. Zidane Iqbal matters because Iraq cannot live only on long balls toward Aymen. Against France, Norway, and Senegal in Group I, a long ball alone becomes a clearance.

Graham Arnold is a sensible fit. He knows how Asian teams survive against stronger sides: ten minutes at a time, set piece by set piece. Pretty is not Iraq's first aim. Being there is.

I do not see Iraq going very deep. The group is too hard. But their story is not in the odds: 21 matches, 40 years, Mexico again. When Iraq walk out, 1986 players, absent fans, and night watchers in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, and Erbil will walk with them.

2026 squad list by position

Note: projected from recent call-ups and qualifying use as of May 2026. The final 26-player squad depends on the official roster.

• Goalkeepers: Jalal Hassan, Fahad Talib, Hussein Hassan
• Defenders: Rebin Sulaka, Frans Putros, Hussein Ali, Merchas Doski, Ali Adnan, Ahmed Yahya, Mustafa Nadhim
• Midfielders: Amir Al-Ammari, Zidane Iqbal, Ibrahim Bayesh, Osama Rashid, Bashar Resan, Safaa Hadi
• Forwards: Aymen Hussein, Ali Jasim, Mohanad Ali, Ali Al-Hamadi, Youssef Amyn, Danilo Al-Saed

If you like reading the World Cup through nationality, position, and roles, play a round here: https://wordlecup.today/en/football/