Abdelilah Mohammed Hassan

Who is Abdelilah Mohammed Hassan?

Abdellilah Mohammed Hassan was an Iraq football coach, who managed the Iraqi national team on two occasions in 1968 and 1972.

Born in the northern city of Mosul in 1934, Abdellilah enrolled at the Sports Training College in Baghdad in 1955 and later traveled to England, where he earned a widely recognised coaching certificate at Lilleshall with the likes of Adil Basher, Shawqi Aboud and Maan Al-Badry. In England, he also spent time looking at coaching methods, techniques and tactics at English clubs Sheffield United and Tottenham Hotspur while in 1974, he traveled to Germany where he spent time with European giants FC Bayern Munich.

During his career, he coached Mosul, Al-Farqa Al-Thalatha and also the Iraqi national team, Olympic and army teams. In 1969, he coached the Palestinian national team and in season 1974-75, he coached Al-Tayaran now known as Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya to the first official Iraqi League. He wrote his first book, New Football in 1968 and second book in 1972 called Football Tactics.

He took over the Iraqi national team for the 1968 Olympic qualifiers in Bangkok, Thailand, where Iraq lost out to the hosts and also coached the team during their two-match tour of the Soviet Union in August, where Iraq lost 4-0 to Traktor Volgograd and beat a Georgia XI 2-0 in their second game in Tblisi. He had a second spell as coach at the 1972 Asian Cup.