Passionate about football since he was little, Ali made it onto the B team of Al-Zawraa, Iraq’s most decorated club. While such confusion amuses him, Ali’s similarity to Salah has prompted him to rethink his own life. ![]() “In my neighbourhood, over a number of days, people who passed me would say ‘Get well soon’,” he remembered, laughing. “When Mohamed Salah was injured, there were some who came to see me as if it was me who was suffering,” he said. Last month Ali joined a group of supporters in the city centre to watch Salah’s Liverpool take on Real Madrid in the Champions League final. He attracts similar attention at his own football matches: “When I played against the Lebanese club Al-Ahed, people were taking photos with me for an hour and a half.” “The day before yesterday I was in a mall the security guards, the shop workers and the clients, everyone wanted to take a photo with me… even the girls!” said Ali. Lately, the “Mohamed Salah of Iraq” can’t leave his house without being stopped for photographs or approached by football fans who mistake him for the Egyptian star. “It’s the real shirt, bought from an official supplier,” he said proudly from his small house, where the shutters are closed against the Baghdad heat during the long hours of electricity cuts.Īli said he paid 40 for the shirt, which he takes carefully from its hanger, while working every day to support his large family and without a wage from playing football. Since then, he has started wearing the red shirt of Salah’s club Liverpool. I replied, ‘No, no, you are Mohamed Salah,” said Ali’s coach Adnan Mohammad.īack when Salah was playing for AS Roma, Ali was aware of the resemblance but took the comments as “a joke”.īut when the Egyptian shot to global fame in the Premier League - becoming “the number one footballer for all Arabs” according to Ali - his Iraqi doppelganger started to seriously work on his image. ![]() “At the first training session, he introduced himself as ‘Hussein Ali’. In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, 20-year-old Ali is frequently stopped in his working-class Hurriya neighbourhood by people wanting a photograph with their idol.Īlthough he is himself a striker, for the Al-Zawraa club, it is Ali’s likeness to Salah which piques Iraqis’ interest. With his black beard, curly hair and football shirt, Iraqi striker Hussein Ali is often mistaken for one of the world’s top players: Egypt’s Mohamed Salah.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |