‘Lion of Mesopotamia’: How Aymen Hussein beat tragedy to reach World Cup
Key takeaways
- Iraq’s ‘most expensive footballer’, the striker who scored Iraq’s qualifying goal against Bolivia, tells Al Jazeera about his difficult path to fame.
- 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.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Iraq’s ‘most expensive footballer’, the striker who scored Iraq’s qualifying goal against Bolivia, tells Al Jazeera about his difficult path to fame.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Aymen Hussein will make his World Cup debut with Iraq [Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters]By Waleed Ibrahim Published On 14 Jun 202614 Jun 2026It 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.