Zakho

Zakho play their fiercest matches against Duhok, and the Badinan Derby carries a weight in the Kurdistan Region that no other fixture matches — two clubs from the same corner of Iraq, contesting a rivalry sharpened by regional pride rather than league position. Erbil provides a second, lesser edge to the calendar, but it is Duhok that decides how a season is remembered, most recently in the 2024–25 Iraq FA Cup final, which Zakho lost to their rivals on penalties after finishing third in the Iraq Stars League that same year.

The club grew out of the Zakho Youth Sporting Center, whose side had already won a regional tournament in nearby Duhok in 1986 under the name Zakho Youth Center before the club took its present form on 3 June 1987. The nickname, Sons of Khabur, ties the team to the river that runs through the city, and the shirt has stayed red through the decades since. Honours have come mostly from regional and second-tier competition: the Iraqi First Division League in 1991–92, two Kurdistan Cups and two Kurdistan Super Cups either side of 2011, and runner-up finishes in the Iraqi Premier Division League in 2001–02 and again in 2018–19.

Home games are played in front of up to 25,000 at the Zakho International Stadium, a ground that once hosted a friendly between Iraq and the club itself in 2015 — the match at which goalkeeper Shwan Jalal made his national-team debut, without ever pulling on a Zakho shirt himself.

No one at the club carries more weight than Ahmed Ibrahim Khalaf, the captain, a defender who has made 118 appearances for Iraq while marshalling the back line at Zakho. Alongside him, Amjad Attwan has built a reputation few midfielders at the club can match, scoring 27 goals in 41 appearances since arriving in 2023.