Iraq FA Cup
The Iraq FA Cup is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic Iraqi football. First held in the 1948–49 season, it is organised by the Iraq Football Association. The tournament begins with two rounds played between lower division clubs, twelve of which advance to the Round of 32, where the Iraqi Premier League clubs are entered. The Round of 32 is then followed by the Round of 16, the quarter-finals, the semi-finals and the final which is played as a single leg at Al-Shaab Stadium.
Significant focus is given to the lower division clubs who progress furthest, with unlikely victories against Premier League teams being labelled as "giant-killings", although no lower division team has been able to get past the semi-finals. The winners of the competition are awarded a place in the next season's AFC Champions League preliminary round 2 as well as qualifying for the Iraqi Super Cup where they play against the league champions at the start of the following season.
Al-Zawraa are the current holders of the cup, having beaten Al-Kahrabaa 1–0 in the 2019 final to win the cup for a record 16th time.
History
Foundation and development
The Iraq Football Association was founded on 8 October 1948 and within its first week it had decided to hold a national knockout cup called the Iraq FA Cup. The tournament kicked off on 21 January 1949 and culminated in Sharikat Naft Al-Basra winning the final on 7 April. For the next 26 years, cup tournaments for clubs were played at a regional level until the Iraq FA Cup returned in 1975 as Iraq's primary national knockout cup competition. Al-Shaab Stadium was chosen by the Iraq FA to host the cup finals as it was able to accommodate the large number of spectators in the capital city. The first club to win the double was Al-Zawraa, winning the 1975–76 Iraqi National League and the 1975–76 Iraq FA Cup. Overall, Al-Zawraa have eight doubles while Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya and Al-Rasheed have two and Al-Talaba have one.In the 1976–77 season, the tournament wasn't held due to scheduling difficulties, and in the 1984–85 season, it was cancelled at the semi-final stage to allow the Iraq national team to prepare for their 1986 FIFA World Cup qualifying matches, which was the same reason why the 1984–85 Iraqi National League was abandoned. The cup was also not held the following season, but returned for the 1986–87 campaign. It was also cancelled in the 2000–01 season due to scheduling difficulties.
The 2003 edition of the Iraq FA Cup Final was not hosted in Al-Shaab Stadium; instead it was hosted in Erbil at the Franso Hariri Stadium for security reasons. The tournament was not held from 2003 up until 2012 as the Iraq War made it too difficult to schedule all the games and made travelling very difficult for some clubs. The cup finally returned in the 2012–13 season, but was eventually cancelled midway through due to scheduling difficulties with the 2012–13 Iraqi Elite League.
It was not held again until the FA decided to hold it in the 2015–16 season. This time, the cup was not abandoned, although a large number of Premier League teams withdrew from the competition. The 2016 Iraq FA Cup Final was the first Iraq FA Cup final held for 13 years, and was played between Baghdad rivals Al-Zawraa and Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya with the latter winning 2–0. In the first edition of the tournament, there were 23 teams; by the 2001–02 season, there was an all-time high of 100 teams in the tournament.
Cup runs and giant-killings
Lower division clubs have knocked out top-flight clubs on numerous occasions. In the cup's first season in 1948–49, Baghdad First Division side Wizarat Al-Tarbiya lost 3–2 to Second Division team Al-Tayour Al-Zarqaa in the second round. In the 1977–78 edition of the cup, the second team of Al-Tayaran, who played in the Iraq Division One, eliminated Al-Jaish, who finished in fourth place in the 1977–78 Iraqi National League, from the first round of the cup with a 1–0 win. In the same edition, Al-Zawraa were defeated by Division One team Al-Bahri in the quarterfinals, 2–1. In the 1982–83 edition, Division One club Al-Hudood knocked out giants Al-Shorta 7–6 on penalties.In the 1989–90 edition, Al-Rasheed, who had won the Premier League in each of the past three seasons and the FA Cup in two of the past three seasons, were defeated by Division One club Al-Tijara 3–2 on aggregate in the Round of 16. In the 1992–93 edition, Al-Tijara pulled off another shock by defeating Al-Shorta in the first round, 2–1, and they also defeated another top-flight team in Al-Jaish in the Round of 16 with the same result.
In the 2015–16 Iraq FA Cup, Division One club Al-Hussein defeated Al-Zawraa 2–1 in the first leg of the quarter-final, which was a great upset considering the fact that Al-Zawraa won the 2015–16 Iraqi Premier League without losing a single match. However, they couldn't complete the upset in the second leg as they lost 3–1 to Al-Zawraa and were knocked out 4–3 on aggregate. The 2016–17 Iraq FA Cup saw two major upsets in the Round of 32 as Premier League leaders Al-Naft lost 3–2 at home to Division One club Al-Sinaa and Premier League title challengers Al-Shorta fell to a 3–1 defeat at home to Division One club Al-Jaish. Al-Minaa are the only team to have participated in every edition of the tournament from 1948–49 up until 2019–20.
Records and statistics
Cup final
- Most wins: 16, Al-Zawraa
- Most consecutive wins: 4, Al-Zawraa
- Most appearances in a final: 18, Al-Zawraa
- Most appearances without winning: 5, Al-Shorta
- Most appearances without losing: 2, Al-Rasheed
- Biggest win: 5 goals, Al-Zawraa 5–0 Al-Baladiyat
- Most goals in a final: 5, Al-Zawraa 5–0 Al-Baladiyat
- Most goals by a losing side: 1, on 13 occasions
- Most defeats: 6, Al-Talaba
All rounds
- Biggest win: Al-Jaish 14–0 Babil
- Most goals by a player in a single tournament: 14, Hashim Ridha
- Most goals by a player in a single game: 5 – joint record:
- *Saeed Nouri
- *Sahib Abbas
- *Mahmoud Karim
- *Mohammed Khoshnaw
- *Mahmoud Kadhim
Finals
| Winning team won the Double |
;Results
Performance by club
List of winning managers
| Season | Nationality | Winning manager | Club |
| 1948–49 | Freddie Gray | Sharikat Naft Al-Basra | |
| 1975–76 | Saadi Salih | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1977–78 | Abdelilah Mohammed Hassan | Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya | |
| 1978–79 | Anwar Jassam | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1979–80 | Muayad Mohammed Salih | Al-Jaish | |
| 1980–81 | Anwar Jassam | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1981–82 | Anwar Jassam | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1982–83 | Wojciech Przybylski | Al-Jaish | |
| 1983–84 | Vincze Géza | Al-Sinaa | |
| 1986–87 | Nasrat Nassir | Al-Rasheed | |
| 1987–88 | Jamal Salih | Al-Rasheed | |
| 1988–89 | Falah Hassan | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1989–90 | Falah Hassan | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1990–91 | Falah Hassan | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1991–92 | Adil Yousef | Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya | |
| 1992–93 | Anwar Jassam | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1993–94 | Ammo Baba | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1994–95 | Hadi Mutanish | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1995–96 | Adnan Hamad | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1996–97 | Ayoub Odisho | Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya | |
| 1997–98 | Anwar Jassam | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1998–99 | Amer Jameel | Al-Zawraa | |
| 1999–2000 | Adnan Hamad | Al-Zawraa | |
| 2001–02 | Thair Ahmed | Al-Talaba | |
| 2002–03 | Thair Ahmed | Al-Talaba | |
| 2015–16 | Ahmed Daham | Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya | |
| 2016–17 | Essam Hamad | Al-Zawraa | |
| 2018–19 | Hakeem Shaker | Al-Zawraa |