Mosul

The double promotion inside two years, from third tier to second and then straight into the top flight, closed with the Iraqi Premier Division League title in 2024–25. Getting there meant winning the Iraqi First Division League in 2023–24 first, so the club effectively climbed the ladder two rungs before it could reach the summit it had known decades earlier.

Supporters call the side The Blue Whale, a nickname that sits oddly with a stadium holding only around 5,000, the University of Mosul Stadium, but the name has stuck regardless of the ground's modest size. The club plays in blue and white, and the Mosul Derby against Al-Karama SC remains the fixture that matters most locally, ahead of any wider rivalry with clubs further north in Nineveh province, such as the Badinan Derby contested by Zakho SC and Duhok SC.

Hawar Mulla Mohammed, later a captain of the Iraqi national team, started his career here in 1998, before the club's fortunes turned harder. Security concerns forced a withdrawal from the Premier League in the 2007–08 season, and financial trouble did the same the year after, a spell that left the current return to the top division carrying more weight than a simple promotion.

None of that was visible in 1947, when the club was founded under a different name, Al-Ahly, a decade before it became Al-Mosul SC in 1957.