Northern Football Correspondent
If there is one thing Manchester United and the Iraq national team can be fairly certain of, it is that there is little chance of Zidane Iqbal getting carried away by the global attention that now surrounds him.
Iqbal made history last month when he became the first British-South Asian to play for United and, on Thursday, a generation of budding Asian players transfixed by this trailblazer’s story will be glued to their screens with the 18-year-old midfielder in line to make his senior debut for Iraq against Iran in Tehran.
It has been quite the ascent for the boy who was born a few months before United signed Cristiano Ronaldo the first time in 2003 and who now calls the five-time World Player of the Year a team-mate, one with whom he recently enjoyed practicing free-kicks in training.
Yet despite becoming a poster boy in his own right, and an inspiration for aspiring Asian footballers who see him breaking down barriers, Iqbal has kept his feet firmly on the ground and remains the same down to earth individual whose talents were first spotted by United as a five-year-old while playing for Sale United in south Manchester.
Iqbal has been playing an influential role in the Professional Footballers’ Association Asian Inclusion Mentoring Scheme (Aims) and, at an event in London last summer, he was mobbed by parents and young players desperate for pictures with the young United star.
It was a reflection of Iqbal’s humility that he was uncomfortable with all the attention he got while colleagues from other clubs who were also there to promote the scheme watched on and wanted to ensure no one felt left out going forward. “I think that demonstrated just how humble he is, it says everything about him,” said Riz Rehman, the PFA’s player inclusion executive. “Zidane never makes it about himself. He’s always thinking about others.”
That personal touch is evident in his interactions with the youngsters he meets and who follow him on social media. One 13-year-old Asian boy at an academy was running around his house in delight after Iqbal wished him happy birthday on Instagram. Iqbal has drawn on the experiences of Asian players through regular conversations with former Fulham and QPR defender Zesh Rehman and the Sunderland center-half Danny Batth and, in turn, is now passing on advice of his own.
He has taken naturally to his role as a mentor on the Aims program and is making quite an impression. Young players have been known to contact him for a chat or advice or a quick game of Fifa. One Asian Under-15 player at Brighton’s academy made a point of telling his dad that he wanted to go to watch Iqbal play for United’s Under-23s against Brighton last week. It was further demonstration of the reach Iqbal - one of only 16 professionals of Asian heritage in the men’s game in England - is having.
“Of course, I’d like to be a good role model,” Iqbal said. “I see lots of people saying, ‘Oh, you’re a role model’ and I try to take that on in everything I do, really.”
For Iqbal’s parents, dad Aamar, mum Ayat and 17-year-old brother Daoud, December 8 2021 is a day that will live long in the memory. There was a minute of normal time left in United’s Champions League tie against Young Boys when the board went up and the club’s No 73 was introduced alongside his lifelong friend and fellow academy graduate, Charlie Savage, son of the former Blackburn and Wales midfielder Robbie. A few of his friends had got near the tunnel before kick-off and gave him high-fives as he ran out.
There were a few tears shed in the Iqbal household that historic night and the next day Iraqi fans bombarded his social media accounts wanting to know if he would be pledging his allegiance to the country. Although Iqbal’s mother, a pharmacist, is from Samawah in Iraq, his father is of Pakistani heritage and grew up in Lahore. Both moved to England when they were young and have lived in Manchester for decades. They still live close to St Margaret’s Church of England Primary School in Whalley Range, which Iqbal attended, and Aamar - a professional working in the retail sector - still coaches at Sale United, where his son took his first steps on the road to stardom.
Iqbal will still swing back and help out his dad, also a keen cricketer, with the occasional session. A rounded midfielder with two good feet, he played a lot of futsal growing up and if you watch his finish for United’s Under-18s against Wolves last year, in which he drove past two men and drilled a hard left foot shot low into the far corner from a tight angle, you will also see he has an eye for goal.
Known to his friends as “Zee”, Zidane - who is not named after the French World Cup winner Zinedine Zidane - means ‘increase’ or ‘more’ in Arabic, a fitting name for a player with a burgeoning career ahead of him. Mesut Ozil, the former Arsenal playmaker and a prominent practicing Muslim like Iqbal, is one of his heroes.
The inclusion of a United player in the Iraq squad is being talked about as a game-changer for the Asian game in general. “Ever since it became known that there was a player of Iraqi and Pakistani origin at Manchester United, every Iraqi and south Asian football fan has been talking about Zidane Iqbal,” Hassanin Mubarak, a prominent journalist and author on Iraqi football, said. “To have an Iraqi player associated with one of the biggest clubs in the world doesn’t happen every day. There have been calls from local media to make sure he plays for the senior national side to avoid any possibility of him switching to England or even Pakistan”.
Against Iran on Thursday, that wish is likely to become a reality, with Iqbal expected to play a role from the bench. He had originally been due to travel to Tehran via Istanbul on Monday but his flight to the Turkish city ended up being cancelled due to snow. Instead, he was re-routed via Dubai, with the Iraqi FA booking him on a business class flight to ensure he was able to get some sleep and arrived in good condition. He had breakfast and lunch with his new international team-mates on Wednesday ahead of his first training session and, according to Gath Muhana, team operations manager with Iraq, has been warmly welcomed into the fold by the players and coach Zeljko Petrovic and his staff.
“I’m very excited,” Iqbal said. “It’s another milestone I’m going to hit. I feel that this is the right decision for me in my career. It’ll be such an honor to represent Iraq. My family are proud of me and I just feel that it’ll be a forward step in my career, playing in the World Cup qualifiers, in big games. I’m proud of being English, Pakistani and Iraqi. Me choosing to play for Iraq doesn’t mean I’m not a proud Mancunian or a proud Pakistani. I just feel this is the right step in my career, but it definitely doesn’t take away the fact that I’m a Mancunian and a Pakistani as well.”
Mubarak said that Iqbal’s inclusion was the latest example of the Iraqi FA’s move to scour Europe for talent after years when the national team was guilty of overlooking foreign based players of Iraqi descent. For example, Bassam Al-Rawi, who was born in Baghdad and whose father played for Iraq, is likely to represent Qatar where he grew up at the World Cup later this year.
The need for a change in strategy was first encouraged by a Kirkuk-born engineer who now resides in the US who searched the internet for eligible youngsters to improve the talent pool. There was also an online movement led by the Iraqi Pro Players website but, in more recent times, the Iraqi FA have finally seized the initiative under former Iraq defender Adnan Dirjal, now the country’s youth and sports minister. “Now the current Iraqi team includes a Londoner, a Mancunian and a Liverpudlian and have players born in Sweden and Denmark, which shows things are changing,” Mubarak said.
No one is attracting attention quite like Iqbal, though. – The Telegraph
