‘Lion of Mesopotamia’: How Aymen Hussein beat tragedy to reach World Cup | He was held at a U…

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‘Lion of Mesopotamia’: How Aymen Hussein beat tragedy to reach World Cup

Iraq’s ‘most expensive footballer’, the striker who scored Iraq’s qualifying goal against Bolivia, retraces his journey about his difficult path to fame.

It has been a long, relentless journey to the World Cup for Iraq’s centre-forward Aymen Hussein, who propelled his country to the tournament for the first time in 40 years when he scored a winning goal against Bolivia in Mexico in the qualifiers.

When he was just 12 and already playing football for a local team, his father was brutally murdered while buying materials to build the family home.

A few years after that, his older brother was kidnapped, and he has not been heard from since.

He was held at a US airport for ‘seven hours’. He just scored Iraq’s first World Cup goal in 40 years!

Aymen Hussein scored Iraq’s first FIFA World Cup goal in 40 years in a landmark moment for the 2007 Asian champions.

Iraq are back on the global stage after four decades in the international wilderness thanks to Australian head coach Graham Arnold, who guided the Lion of Mesopotamia through an inter-confederation play-off.

Up against Erling Haaland and Norway in Group I on Wednesday (AEST), Iraq hero Hussein scored a memorable equaliser in Foxborough – just outside of Boston.

His perfect 39th-minute header marked Iraq’s first World Cup goal since their 2-1 loss to Belgium on June 8, 1986.

It was also the 34th goal of the 30-year-old’s international career and it came after he was questioned for seven hours by US immigration officials after touching down on American soil.

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Iraq’s journey to their first World Cup finals tournament in 40 years involved sacrifices unmatched by any other side. After 20 qualifiers, the team faced a decisive playoff in the Mexican city of Monterrey but, with Iraq dragged into the Middle East war and airspace closed, several staff and players had an arduous job getting there.

“They had to travel from different cities to Baghdad by car or bus,” says René Meulensteen, the assistant to Iraq’s head coach, Graham Arnold. “Some of those journeys took up to eight hours. Then, from Baghdad they travelled roughly 15 hours on bumpy roads to Amman, in Jordan, where occasional flights were still operating. The other Asian‑based players made their own way to Amman, so they could all travel together.”

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