Erbil

The Franso Hariri Stadium holds 25,000 and gives Erbil its yellow identity a physical shape: the seats, the shirts, the name locals use for the club, "The Yellow Castle."

Erbil SC came out of the old Kurdistan-Iraq Football Association on 3 November 1968, and for most of its first two decades stayed in regional and lower-tier football, reaching the top flight in 1987-88 and only staying up because the league expanded. Relegation followed in 1994-95; the club won the second division in 1998-99 and went back up.

Nadhim Shaker took over in 2005, and within two years Erbil were champions of Iraq. They won it again in 2008, in 2009, and in 2012 — four titles in six seasons, a run that made them the first Kurdish club to top Iraqi football and only the third side from outside Baghdad to manage it. The same period took the club to two AFC Cup finals, in 2012 and 2014.

The financial cost of that spell caught up with the club. Key players were sold off, and Erbil went down in 2015-16 after withdrawing from the league altogether. Promotion came back in 2017-18, but money and, at times, politics have kept the club from returning to where Shaker took it.