Emmanuel Baba Dawood, popularly known as Ammo Baba, was a celebrated figure in Iraqi sport. He was not only arguably the best footballer to come out of Iraq, but went on to a successful, lengthy coaching career during which he was several times manager of the national team. Stockily built and extremely athletic, Ammo Baba was an instinctive goal-scorer. Possessed of a powerful shot and famed for his execution of the bicycle kick, he attracted the interest of several English clubs early in his playing career but felt it wise, during an era of political instability in his homeland, to forgo a career abroad.
Ammo Baba was strong-willed and outspoken and his courage was tested several times during his regular stints as the national coach from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. During much of that time Saddam Hussein’s brutal and unpredictable son, Uday, was head of the Iraqi Football Association. Ammo Baba had to put up with periodic character assassination in the Iraqi press, orchestrated by Uday, when the team performed poorly. He was sent to prison several times for showing what Uday considered disrespect — on the last occasion, in 1999 after accusing Uday of fixing a league match, Baba nearly died as he was refused his medication for a heart condition and diabetes.
Emmanuel Baba Dawood was born in 1934, two years after Iraq had become independent after the end of the British mandate. His birth took place on an RAF base in Baghdad where his father was employed. When he was 3 the family moved to a civilian settlement on the large RAF base at Habbaniya, west of Baghdad. It was there that the young Baba first encountered the game of football, as he watched captivated by British servicemen playing matches. Without a ball of his own to kick around at home, he scoured the house for pieces of cloth to stuff inside a sock as a substitute. With his family’s encouragement, Baba started playing for the team at school, where his teachers soon came to realise he was interested only in sport. He also took up athletics and was soon regarded as one of the fastest young 400-metres runners in the country.
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Still at school, Baba began playing for the RAF Employees’ (Assyrian) Club in 1951, the same year that he was spotted by the Iraqi schools’ coach, Ismail Mohammed. Mohammed selected him to play in a Pan-Arab School Championship held in Cairo, where he made an immediate impact and after which the coach advised him to move to Baghdad to play for one of Iraq’s top teams. As a result, Baba signed for the Haris al-Maliki (Royal Guards) team in the capital, where he became a huge success on account of his heavy goal-scoring.
Baba was chosen to play for Iraq at 20 in 1955 in a qualifier for the World Military Championships. Two years later he made his full international debut for his country in a match against Morocco at the Pan-Arab Games in Beirut. Baba’s goal in the 3-3 draw was Iraq’s first in an international. In the following match, against Tunisia, Baba became the first Iraqi player to be sent off in an international, after arguing with the referee.
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Baba’s goal-scoring exploits meant that by 1958, when he was sent — on the orders of King Faisal — to London for treatment for an injury, his presence in Britain attracted the attention of several clubs here. The English second division side Notts County — whose manager had coached the Iraqi military team — was reported to have drawn up a contract. However, the Iraqi Embassy in London intervened to advise him that the King would look very badly on such a move, and with the additional persuasion of the head of the army and air force arriving in a special aircraft to take him home, Baba resisted the lure of a career in the game’s homeland.
Back in Iraq, where King Faisal had now been overthrown in a coup led by General Abdul-Karim Qasim, Ammo Baba resumed his goal-scoring feats for a succession of top clubs. Such was his standing in the Arab football world that when an All-Arab team was created in the mid-1960s with two players chosen for the squad from each country, Ammo Baba was named captain. The formation of the team was inspired by the pan-Arab ideas of the Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. Predictably, Baba scored the first goal for his side, but it played only a few games against local Egyptian teams before being disbanded.
Baba suffered a serious injury in 1965 which threatened to end his career, but he recovered to play five more seasons before hanging up his boots in 1970 at 35. He made his final international appearance in a one-nil win over Libya in March 1967. He scored 11 international goals and about 850 overall throughout his career. His playing days passed almost seamlessly into coaching. In 1971 Baba was appointed coach of the Kuliya al-Askaria side and was asked to take charge of the Iraqi military team. He was first appointed national team manager in 1978 and would be reappointed a number of times over the next two decades. His successes included three victories in the regional Gulf Cup (in 1979, 1984 and 1988), and one each in the Asian Games (1982) and the Arab Cup (1988). He also led the Iraqi football team to three Olympic Games, starting with Moscow in 1980.
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Although revered for his successes by ordinary Iraqis, the Baathist regime was less grateful. The team’s exit from the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984 led to attacks on Baba in the Iraqi press and insinuations about his alleged British “sympathies” based on the circumstances of his birth. The criticism — orchestrated by Uday Hussein — was worse after the Seoul Olympics four years later. On both occasions, perhaps reassured by his great popularity with the Iraqi public, Baba fought back, criticising Iraqi FA officials and accusing them of denying the team the resources it needed. The personal tension with Uday came to a head in a league title decider in 1992 between Ammo Baba’s al-Zawraa club and al-Jawiya in front of 50,000 fans in Baghdad al-Shaab football stadium. Infuriated by his team being denied what appeared a legitimate equaliser, Baba refused to go up to the podium to receive a loser’s medal from Uday, leading many of the fans to chant his name.
Saddam’s vindictive son made sure that Ammo Baba would pay for his actions. Uday had the football coach arrested and humiliated several times in the 1990s. The pressure on his family was such that he ended up divorcing his wife because he refused to leave Iraq and join her in exile with his children. Eventually, with his coaching expertise neglected by the authorities, he turned his attention to founding a football school for underprivileged children.
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Even the removal of Saddam’s regime and Uday’s killing after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 did not spare Ammo Baba further indignity. In January 2006 he was attacked at his home in Dohuk in northern Iraq and beaten and robbed by thugs, possibly because he was a committed Christian. The Iraqi authorities promised then to pay all his medical bills.
Ammo Baba was buried in a coffin draped with the Iraqi national flag at the national football stadium in Baghdad as he had requested. The Iraqi Vice-President, Adel Abdul Mahdi, led the tributes to the “player, trainer and teacher . . . always in the hearts of the Iraqi people”.
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Ammo Baba, footballer and coach, was born on November 27, 1934. He died after suffering complications from diabetes on May 27, 2009, aged 74