Jalal Abdul-Rahman

Jalal Abdul-Rahman died on 28 September 2026 at the age of 82. Arabic Wikipedia and a line added to his English Wikipedia stub both give that date. Shafaq News published English and Arabic notices from Baghdad on 29 September 2026, saying he had died after an illness and recalling his international debut in the 1974 World Cup qualifiers and his part in the 1976 Asian Cup finals. The reports available at the time of writing did not name a specific hospital, city of death, or detailed medical cause beyond illness. Funeral arrangements and formal statements from the Iraq Football Association had not yet been set out in those first notices.

Jalal Abdul-Rahman was born in Baghdad on 6 May 1944. Shafaq News identified him as a member of Iraq's Feyli Kurdish community. Public sources give little detail about his schooling or youth clubs, but by the mid-1960s he was already in senior football in the capital, beginning a club career that would last into the early 1980s.

Abdul-Rahman played as a goalkeeper for Al-Naqil SC from 1964 to 1975 and for Al-Zawra'a SC from 1975 to 1980, according to his English Wikipedia entry and club chronologies repeated in Iraqi sports writing. He earned caps for Iraq between 1970 and 1976. He took part in the country's first FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, aimed at the 1974 finals, and was selected for the 1976 AFC Asian Cup. Those appearances fixed his reputation as one of Iraq's principal keepers of the decade, before later generations such as Raad Hammoudi became the better-known faces of the role.

Beyond his playing record, few personal details have been published in English. Shafaq News reported that he was the uncle of the Iraq national team's goalkeeping coach at the time of his death, underlining a family link to the national side. Older interviews and fan accounts have placed him in the United States in later life, but the first Shafaq reports of his death did not expand on his residence or family beyond that coaching connection.

Abdul-Rahman belongs to the generation that took Iraqi goalkeeping from domestic leagues onto the Asian Cup stage. Supporters of Al-Zawra'a and older national-team followers still place him among the keepers who defined the 1970s. The family link noted by Shafaq News, that he was uncle to Iraq's goalkeeping coach, gives his career a second life in the present squad. For a player whose English Wikipedia page remains a stub, the outpouring of Arabic sports notices at his death was a reminder of how firmly he sat in Iraq's football memory.