Full name | Al-Talaba Sport Club |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | Al-Aneeq (The Elegant) |
Founded | 1969 1977 as Al-Talaba |
as Al-Jameaa
Ground | Al-Talaba Stadium, Baghdad, Iraq |
Capacity | 8,000 |
Owner | Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research |
President | Alaa Kadhim |
Manager | Habib Jafar |
League | Iraqi Premier League |
2016–17 | Iraqi Premier League, 7th |
Al-Talaba Sport Club (Students Sport Club, Arabic: نادي الطلبة الرياضي) is an Iraqi sports club based in Al-Rusafa, Baghdad. Its football team competes in the Iraqi Premier League, the top flight of Iraqi football. Founded as Al-Jameaa Football Club in 1969, the club became known as Al-Talaba in 1977. The club's home stadium is Al-Talaba Stadium.
Al-Talaba have won five league titles, with the most recent being in the 2001–02 season. They also achieved two FA Cups and three Umm Al-Ma'arik Cups, one of the four clubs that won it the most of any Iraqi club. The club also became the runners-up of the 1995 Asian Cup Winners' Cup. Al-Talaba have won two international club competitions: the 1984 Stafford Cup and the 2005 Damascus International Championship.
Since it was first established, Al-Jameaa was owned by the University of Baghdad. In 1977, the club dissolved and then refounded under the name Al-Talaba, becoming owned by the National Union of Iraqi Students. Since 1993, the owner of the club became the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the minister is the honorary president of the club.
In 1964, the University of Baghdad formed a football club made of the best football-playing students in the university, under the name of Montakhab Jameaat Baghdad, to compete in the Universities of Iraq League. The first president of the club was Hassan Kanah and the first technical staff consisted of the manager, Ghani Askar, and his two assistants, Moayad Al-Badri and Sami Al-Saffar. The first competition that the team played in was the 1964 Republic Championship.