Player, coach, institution. The story behind the portrait on our stone-grey tee.
Some men score goals. Some men win cups. A very few become the reason a country plays the game at all. Emmanuel Baba Dawud — Ammo Baba to every kid who ever kicked a ball in Iraq — was the third kind.
As a striker he terrorised defences across the fifties and sixties. As a coach he took the national team to Gulf Cup after Gulf Cup and refused to let standards drop, even when everything around the game was falling apart.
The touchline silhouette
Late in life he poured what he had into a football school for orphans, coaching from a chair when his legs gave out. That silhouette — tracksuit, whistle, absolute authority — is the one we drew for the tee.
“Before the trophies, there was a man on the touchline demanding more.”
Wear it like he coached: shoulders back, no excuses.
