Culture of Iraq - Sport

Sport

Football is the most popular sport in Iraq. Football is a considerable uniting factor in Iraq, following years of war and unrest. Basketball, swimming, weightlifting, bodybuilding, boxing, kickboxing, and tennis are also popular sports.

The Iraqi Football Association (Arabic: الاتحاد العراقي لكرة القدم‎) is the governing body of football in Iraq, controlling the Iraq national football team and the Iraq Super League (also known as Dawri Al-Nokba). It was founded in 1948, and has been a member of FIFA since 1950, and the Asian Football Confederation since 1971. The Iraqi national football team were the 2007 AFC Asian Cup Champions after defeating Saudi Arabia in the final.

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Famous quotes containing the word sport:

    Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

    George Orwell (1903–1950)

    I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.
    Willa Cather (1876–1947)