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71-404: The top eight teams of the previous Iraqi Premier League season entered the competition, with the exception of the first and third editions, where the top six teams of the league entered. The teams were split into two groups, and the top two teams from each group advanced to the semi-finals. The winners would contest the final, and the losers would play for third place. Although the tournament

142-476: A "ladder" that uses a promotion and relegation system, where individual players and pre-made teams can be promoted and relegated during the first few weeks of a league season, which generally lasts around 11 weeks, with promotion and relegation taking place based on a skill rating, which is in turn based on wins and losses. However, this form of matchmaking is not typically used for StarCraft II e-sports tournaments, which have various kinds of structures depending on

213-535: A 1–1 draw with Al-Sinaa . Al-Tayaran were crowned champions of the inaugural season which featured the following teams: On 4 June 2023, Iraq Football Association (IFA) signed a three-year partnership agreement with Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional (LaLiga) to transform the Iraqi Premier League into a professional league from the 2023–24 season. The competition is named the Iraq Stars League and

284-683: A 2–0 defeat of Altyn Asyr in 2018 . Iraqi clubs also participate in the Arab Club Champions Cup and the AGCFF Gulf Club Champions League , which are organised by the Union of Arab Football Associations and the Arab Gulf Cup Football Federation respectively. Al-Shorta won the inaugural Arab Club Champions Cup in 1982 by defeating Al-Nejmeh 4–2 on aggregate in the final. Meanwhile, Al-Rasheed won

355-496: A 3–1 win for Al-Zawraa. After the first edition of the competition that was set up by Al-Talaba, the Iraq Football Association adopted the competition due to its promising reception from fans, and increased the number of participating teams from six to eight. The tournament was criticised for containing only the top eight teams of the league, because it was thought that Iraqi football needed another competition other than

426-516: A committee to administrate the competition, which decided to name the tournament as the Umm al-Ma'arik Championship (referring to the name that Saddam Hussein referred to the Gulf War as) and to make 2 September the opening date. Over 55,000 spectators came to Al-Shaab Stadium , a ground that could only hold 50,000 at the time, to watch the cup final between Al-Zawraa and Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya , which ended with

497-701: A decade (concluded 1891). In 1903 it accepted parity with the American League and the formation of the organization that would become Major League Baseball . The peace agreement between the NL and the AL did not change the "closed shop" of top-level baseball but entrenched it by including the AL in the shop. This was further confirmed by the Supreme Court's 1922 ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League , giving MLB

568-609: A legal monopoly over professional baseball in the US. The other major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada have followed the MLB model of a franchise based system. In contrast to baseball's NABBP , the first governing body in English football survived the onset of professionalism, which it formally accepted in 1885. Perhaps the great geographical concentration of population and

639-499: A live television program. The addition of a semi-final in 2004 allowed for more than 26 songs, but in 2008 automatic qualification of the previous year's top 10 to the final was removed. In Brazilian carnival's samba school contest, a similar system is adopted, with the schools from lower divisions, or "groups", able to be promoted into the highest tier, being currently called the "Special Group" ( Grupo Especial ). Schools parade in order of groups and ranking from last year contest, with

710-689: A lower level, like independent professional leagues in American baseball today). For decades, teams finishing near the bottom of The Football League's lowest division(s) faced re-election rather than automatic relegation. But the principle of promotion and relegation had been firmly established, and it eventually expanded to the football pyramid in place today. Meanwhile, The FA has remained English football's overall governing body, retaining amateur and professional clubs rather than breaking up. Promotion and relegation has been used in several eSports leagues. Blizzard Entertainment 's video game StarCraft II has

781-509: A maximum of one Syrian player. Only six foreign players including Yemeni and Syrian players can play at any given time, and no more than two players from countries ranked below 90th in the FIFA Men's World Ranking can play at any given time. A maximum of five substitutions are available per match for each team. The winners of the league qualify for the Iraqi Super Cup , a match played against

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852-496: A number of seasons. Originally the previous two seasons, and later three or four seasons, clubs avoid relegation by having a high coefficient, which is obtained by dividing the points achieved in the last three seasons by the number of matches played in the same period. Teams with the lowest points coefficient at the end of the season are relegated to the Primera B Nacional . This system has both positive and negative aspects, since all of

923-569: A place in the league year after year would permit the owners to monopolize fan bases in their exclusive territories and give them the confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. In turn, those would guarantee the revenues to support traveling halfway across a continent for games. Indeed, after its first season, the new league banked on its still doubtful stability by expelling its members in New York and Philadelphia (the two largest cities), because they had breached agreements to visit

994-485: A play-off with the 3rd-placed team from the Premier Division League for a place in the following season's Stars League. Each club must register a 25-man squad for the season, but are not required to register players who have been registered for their reserve or youth teams. Each club is allowed a maximum of six foreign outfield players in their squad, however this restriction does not apply to Yemeni players and to

1065-521: A similar system where in the top eight finishers of one of the bi-annual Majors are designated with the "Legends" seed and automatically qualified for the next Major tournament. The best six eliminated teams in the second stage (known as New Legends Stage ) of the Major would play a "qualifying" stage (known as New Challengers Stage ) with another ten teams from the Minors qualifying tournaments in order to compete at

1136-418: A system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are promoted to a higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are relegated to the lower division for the next season. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the promotion zone , and those at

1207-473: A total of 38 games (however, matches between Baghdad's Big Four clubs are played at the neutral venue of Al-Shaab Stadium to accommodate more spectators). Teams receive three points for a win and one point for a draw. No points are awarded for a loss. Teams are ranked by total points, then head-to-head points, then head-to-head goal difference , then total goal difference, then goals scored and then number of wins. If still equal, teams are deemed to occupy

1278-531: Is a fact that the relegated schools have more to lose nowadays, such as access to the Cidade do Samba ("Samba City") facilities. There have been reported several interferences on the contest's final result, especially when traditional schools are involved. From 1957 to 1966 and from 1983 to the present, the Argentine First Division has used a system called Promedios based on the average performance over

1349-592: Is designed to meet the licensing criteria set down by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). A new association named the Iraqi Pro League Association , chaired by Javier Jiménez Sacristán and Matteo Mantovani, was formed to operate the competition and supervise the associated youth leagues. An Iraqi management team is also being trained by LaLiga to take control of the committee once the partnership deal ends. A start date of 26 October 2023

1420-709: Is the highest level of the Iraqi football league system . Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Iraqi Premier Division League . It is governed by the Iraqi Pro League Association . The league was formed by the Iraq Football Association in 1974 as the Iraqi National Clubs League, the first nationwide league of clubs in Iraq, and later became known as

1491-486: Is the only time that this has happened in the history of the league; the top four spots were occupied by Erbil , Al-Najaf , Duhok and Al-Amana . However, Baghdad's Big Four have since returned to dominating the league, having won all titles since 2015–16 . There are currently 20 clubs in the Iraq Stars League. During the course of a season, each club plays the others twice (a double round-robin system ), once at their home stadium and once at that of their opponents, for

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1562-431: The 2011 Copa Sudamericana . This system forces the newly promoted teams to fight relegation from the very beginning of the season. It also allows teams with a low budget with previous good campaigns to compete in international competitions without having to prioritize the championship to avoid relegation; examples of this are Club Atlético Lanús , winner of the 2013 Copa Sudamericana , or Club Atlético Talleres , winner of

1633-506: The Baghdad -based clubs and join clubs in the North such as Erbil and Duhok due to the economic instability and security issues in the capital city. This led to a shift in the dominance of the "Big Four" as Erbil won three consecutive league titles from 2007 to 2009 with Duhok winning the league in 2010. In the 2008–09 season, none of Baghdad's Big Four clubs finished in the top four and this

1704-567: The Baghdad derbies . The current champions are Al-Shorta, who won their third consecutive title in 2023–24 . Up until 1973, leagues in Iraq were played at a regional level. The Central FA League , the Basra League and the Kirkuk League were all founded in 1948, while the Mosul League was founded in 1950. The first nationwide league to be held in the country was in the 1973–74 season when

1775-567: The English Football League ) was founded in 1888, it was not intended to be a rival of The Football Association but rather the top competition within it. The new league was not universally accepted as England's top-calibre competition right away. To help win fans of clubs outside The Football League, its circuit was not closed; rather, a system was established in which the worst teams at the end of each season would need to win re-election against any clubs wishing to join. A rival league,

1846-808: The Football Alliance , was formed in 1889. When the two merged in 1892, it was not on equal terms; rather, most of the Alliance clubs were put in the new Football League Second Division , whose best teams would move up to the First Division in place of its worst teams. Another merger, with the top division of the Southern League in 1920, helped form the Third Division in similar fashion. Since then no new league has been formed of non-league clubs to try to achieve parity with The Football League (only to play at

1917-460: The Iraq FA Cup that allowed clubs from lower divisions to participate. In almost every single edition of the cup, three of the four Baghdad Derby clubs ( Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya , Al-Shorta , Al-Talaba and Al-Zawraa ) finished in the top four, while in the 2002–03 and 2003–04 seasons, all of them finished in the top four. All of the four Baghdad Derby teams have won the title three times. Due to

1988-527: The Iraqi National First Division was formed, with Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya being crowned champions. The IFA then decided to replace the competition with a new National Clubs League which would only be open to clubs and not institute-representative teams. The league held its first season in 1974–75 and was originally composed of ten clubs. The league's first ever goal was scored by Falah Hassan of Al-Tayaran (now known as Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya) in

2059-521: The Italian Football Federation has relegated clubs found to have been involved in match fixing . This occurred most recently in 2006, when the season's initial champions Juventus were relegated to Serie B, and two other teams were initially relegated but then restored to Serie A after appeal (see 2006 Serie A scandal ). As of the 2020s, empirical evidence increasingly pointed to the conclusion that promotion and relegation, standing alone,

2130-593: The New Legends Stage . Starting in 2020, however, this was changed to a Regional Major Ranking system, at first a points-based system which was used for ESL One Rio 2020 and PGL Stockholm 2021 (The top rankings from the ESL One Rio 2020 RMRs were turned into PGL Stockholm 2021 points once IEM Rio was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic ) and then a series of offline qualifiers starting with PGL Antwerp 2022 , in which

2201-464: The major league and minor leagues . The number of teams exchanged between the divisions is almost always identical. Exceptions occur when the higher division wishes to change the size of its membership, or has lost one or more of clubs (to financial insolvency or expulsion, for example) and wishes to restore its previous membership size, in which case fewer teams are relegated from that division, or (less often) more teams are accepted for promotion from

Umm al-Ma'arik Championship - Misplaced Pages Continue

2272-457: The 2010–11 and 2011–12 seasons and Fuchs in the 2015–16 season. Bold denotes players still playing in the Iraq Stars League. The current Iraq Stars League trophy was revealed on 13 July 2024 and was sculpted by the Iraqi painter and sculptor Ahmed Albahrani . The trophy is predominantly silver in colour, and features a silver and golden football at the top. The trophy has a silver base with

2343-553: The Arab Club Champions Cup three times in a row in 1985 , 1986 and 1987 and are the competition's joint-most successful side. The league was founded as the National Clubs League and has been renamed several times, with the current Stars League name remaining in place since 2023. The competition has had title sponsorship rights sold to three companies, which were Zain Iraq in the 2009–10 season, Asiacell in

2414-468: The Billie Jean King Cup) at the top and series of regional groups at a lower level. The World Groups in both use a knockout tournament format, with the first-round losers entering play-offs with winners from regional groups to avoid relegation. In international tournaments, this format allows teams from countries in which a sport is less well established to have competitive matches, while opening up

2485-534: The Iraqi Premier League. In 2023, the competition was transformed into a professional league under the name Iraq Stars League. The current format sees 20 teams playing 38 matches each (playing each team in the league twice, home and away), totalling 380 matches in the season. Of the 80 teams to have competed since the inception of the league in 1974, eleven have won the title. Al-Zawraa are the most successful club with 14 titles, followed by Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya (7), Al-Shorta (7) and Al-Talaba (5), who together contest

2556-674: The LCK moved away from the system in 2020. As of 2023, the Pacific Championship Series and Liga Latinoamérica are the only top-tier professional League of Legends leagues to have promotion and relegation; North America's second-tier league, the North American Challengers League, also has promotion and relegation, as do the various regional leagues in Europe, but not with the top divisions. The Counter-Strike Majors used

2627-518: The Torneo Apertura in 2009 and last place in the next championship, the Torneo Clausura 2010, without being relegated until the end of the Torneo Apertura 2010 with a second-to-last place finish. Similarly, River Plate finished last in the Torneo Apertura 2008 and after two bad campaigns and a mediocre one was relegated in the Torneo Clausura 2011 despite being in fifth place and qualifying for

2698-441: The better ranked inside a group and the higher-tier groups having the privilege of going latter (this means the team has the opportunity of fixing issues with costumes and allegorical floats as well as more rehearsal time). The number of promoted and relegated schools, four until 1997, has been diminishing as time passes, becoming two from 1998 to 2007 and being only one nowadays. There has never been an official reason for that, but it

2769-486: The bottom are in the relegation zone ( colloquially the drop zone or facing the drop ). An alternate system of league organization, used primarily in Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the United States, is a closed model based on licensing or franchises . This maintains the same teams from year to year, with occasional admission of expansion teams and relocation of existing teams , and with no team movement between

2840-429: The boundary between the feeder leagues may have to transfer from one feeder league to another to maintain numerical balance. The system is said to be the defining characteristic of the "European" form of professional sports league organization . Promotion and relegation have the effect of allowing the maintenance of a hierarchy of leagues and divisions, according to the relative strength of their teams. They also maintain

2911-556: The championship. This was the first and last edition of the Baghdad Championship, as the tournament was discontinued after that season. Since then, it has often been referred to as the Iraqi Elite Cup due to the fact that it was contested between the best eight teams in the country each year. Iraqi Premier League The Iraq Stars League ( Arabic : دوري نجوم العراق , romanized :  Dawrī Nujūm Al-'Irāq ),

Umm al-Ma'arik Championship - Misplaced Pages Continue

2982-444: The club can not move underperforming players on, or second, the club is gambling on being promoted back straight away and is prepared to take a financial loss for one or two seasons to do so. Some leagues (most notably English football's Premier League ) offer " parachute payments " to its relegated teams for the following year(s). The payouts are higher than the prize money received by some non-relegated teams and are designed to soften

3053-467: The corresponding short distances between urban centres was crucial. Certainly it provided the opportunity for more clubs' developing large fan bases without incurring great travel costs. Professional football did not gain acceptance until after the turn of the 20th century in most of Southern England . The earliest league members travelled only through the Midlands and North . When The Football League (now

3124-546: The division below. Such variations usually cause a "knock-on" effect through the lower divisions. For example, in 1995 the Premier League voted to reduce its numbers by two and achieved the desired change by relegating four teams instead of the usual three, whilst allowing only two promotions from Football League Division One . Even in the absence of such extraordinary circumstances, the pyramid-like nature of most European sports league systems can still create knock-on effects at

3195-468: The earliest American sport to develop professional leagues, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was established in 1857 as a national governing body for the game. In many respects, it would resemble England's Football Association when founded in 1863. Both espoused strict amateurism in their early years and welcomed hundreds of clubs as members. Baseball's National Association

3266-604: The end of the rule of the former president Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the Iraq Football Association decided to change the competition's name from Umm al-Ma'arik Championship to Baghdad Championship due to the former name's resemblance to the Gulf War . It was named the Baghdad Championship because all of the competition's matches were played in Baghdad, being divided between Al-Shorta Stadium , Al-Karkh Stadium , Al-Zawraa Stadium , and Al-Sinaa Stadium . It ended with Al-Zawraa winning

3337-537: The final of Asia's secondary tournament, the AFC Cup , twice in 2012 and 2014 but lost both times to Al-Kuwait and Al-Qadsia respectively. Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya managed to win the AFC Cup when they beat Indian club Bengaluru FC 1–0 in the 2016 final , and they won the competition for the second consecutive season in 2017 by beating FC Istiklol by the same scoreline. They earned a joint-record third AFC Cup title with

3408-476: The financial hit that clubs take whilst dropping out of the Premier League. However, in many cases, these parachute payments just serve to inflate the costs of competing for promotion among the lower division clubs as newly relegated teams retain a financial advantage. In some countries and at certain levels, teams in line for promotion may have to satisfy certain non-playing conditions in order to be accepted by

3479-468: The financial value of such games in terms of ticket sales and media rights . This explained why in the 2020s, association football leagues were collectively bringing in annually only about two times the revenue of the National Football League ( the wealthiest sports league in the world ), even though association football had eight times the number of fans worldwide as American football . It

3550-533: The four western clubs at the end of the season. The NL's dominance of baseball was challenged several times after its first few years, but only by entire leagues. Eight clubs, the established norm for a national league, was a prohibitively high threshold for a new venture. Two challengers succeeded beyond the short-term, with the National League fighting off a challenge from the American Association after

3621-406: The higher league, such as financial solvency, stadium capacity, and facilities. If these are not satisfied, a lower-ranked team may be promoted in their place, or a team in the league above may be saved from relegation. While the primary purpose of the promotion and relegation system is to maintain competitive balance, it may also be used as a disciplinary tool in special cases. On several occasions,

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3692-678: The importance of games played by many low-ranked teams near the end of the season, which may be at risk of relegation. In contrast, the final games of a low-ranked US or Canadian team serve little purpose, and in fact losing may be beneficial to such teams because they offer a better position in the next year's draft . Although not intrinsic to the system, problems can occur due to the differing monetary payouts and revenue-generating potential that different divisions provide to their clubs. For example, financial hardship has sometimes occurred in leagues where clubs do not reduce their wage bill once relegated. This usually occurs for one of two reasons: first,

3763-421: The matches played for the championship in the last seasons are included in the coefficient for the clubs. Teams have an incentive to score points in every match of the season, meaning teams that are not challenging for the title or fighting relegation in the current season want to win even in the final matches to reduce the risk of relegation in the next season; examples are Club Atlético Banfield being champion of

3834-625: The organizer, the most important being the ESL Pro Tour as of 2021 . Most professional League of Legends leagues like the League of Legends Championship Series and League of Legends Champions Korea used a promotion and relegation system, although the LCS moved away from this in 2018 for North America LCS and 2019 for the European LCS (which was renamed to the League of Legends European Championship ), while

3905-522: The performance of teams in AFC competitions in the previous four years. Collectively, Iraqi teams have reached nine finals of Asian club competitions. Before the foundation of the national league, Aliyat Al-Shorta were the first Iraqi team to participate in the Asian Champion Club Tournament in 1971 and they reached the final, but they refused to play Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv and took

3976-735: The possibility of competing against higher ranked nations as a sport grows. Other international tournaments which employ promotion and relegation include the Ice Hockey World Championships , Bandy World Championships , Floorball World Championships , the UEFA Nations League , the CONCACAF Nations League , the World Cricket League and the European Team Championships in athletics. In baseball,

4047-415: The qualifying rounds of the 2000–01 season), 80 teams have taken part in at least a single round. The teams in bold are competing in the Iraq Stars League in the 2024–25 season. Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya and Al-Shorta are the only teams to have played in every single one of the 51 seasons. The champions of the Iraq Stars League qualify for the subsequent season's AFC Champions League Elite league stage, while

4118-404: The regional level. For example, in a higher league with a large geographical footprint and multiple feeder leagues each representing smaller geographical regions, should most or all of the relegated teams in the higher division come from one particular region then the number of teams to be promoted or relegated from each of the feeder leagues may have to be adjusted, or one or more teams playing near

4189-472: The runner-up spot. Al-Rasheed reached the final of the Asian Club Championship in 1989 but they lost a two-legged final on away goals to Al-Saad of Qatar . Al-Talaba reached the final of the 1995 Asian Cup Winners' Cup but they lost it 2–1 to Bellmare Hiratsuka , and five years later, Al-Zawraa lost the final of the same competition 1–0 to Shimizu S-Pulse in 2000 . Erbil reached

4260-496: The runners-up were given 100k IQD. The idea of this tournament was requested by the administration of Al-Talaba SC to the Iraq Football Association and it was to put the top six teams of the 1990–91 Iraqi National League in a single-elimination competition, because of the lack of Iraqi competitions other than the Iraqi National League and the Iraq FA Cup . The Iraq FA accepted the request on 24 August 1991, and put up

4331-470: The same position. If there is a tie for the championship, for relegation, or for qualification to other competitions, a play-off match at a neutral venue decides rank. The two teams at the bottom of the league table are relegated to the Iraqi Premier Division League , while the top two teams in the Premier Division League are promoted to the Stars League. The 18th-placed team in the Stars League competes in

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4402-602: The teams from the Legends Stage (Now known as the Elimination Stage ) from the previous Major automatically qualify for their RMRs and are joined by online qualifiers. From 1993 until 2003, the Eurovision Song Contest used various systems of relegation to reconcile the number of countries wishing to participate (approximately 30 at the time) with the number of performances allowed considering time constraints of

4473-523: The winners of the Iraq FA Cup (if the league winners also win the Iraq FA Cup, they play the league runners-up instead). Twenty clubs are competing in the 2024–25 Iraq Stars League, including two promoted from the Premier Division League : : Founding member of the league : Never been relegated from the league Since its first season in 1974–75 up until the 2024–25 season (not counting

4544-711: The winners of the Iraq FA Cup qualify for the AFC Champions League Two group stage. If the same team wins the Stars League and the FA Cup, the Stars League runners-up qualify for the AFC Champions League Two group stage. The number of places allocated to Iraqi clubs in AFC competitions is dependent upon the position the country holds in the AFC Club Competitions Ranking , which is calculated based upon

4615-481: The words "Iraq Stars League" written in English and Arabic, alongside the logo of the competition and the season. The following managers have won multiple titles: Promotion and relegation Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a League system , based on their performance over a season . Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In

4686-408: Was insufficient to ensure adequate parity in any given game or the overall financial performance of a sport (as distinguished from individual players or teams). Most importantly, the failure of most association football leagues to adequately regulate individual player compensation (that is, by imposing salary caps ) had resulted in too many games ending in predictable blowouts , and thereby reduced

4757-419: Was not able to survive the onset of professionalism . It responded to the trend – clubs secretly paying or indirectly compensating players – by establishing a "professional" class for 1869. As quickly as 1871, most of those clubs broke away and formed the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). That new, professional Association was open at a modest fee, but it proved to be unstable. It

4828-424: Was one of the four major domestic trophies attainable by top-flight teams at the time, it was perceived by larger clubs as being of a lower priority to the league championship and the Iraq FA Cup . In the first edition, the winners received a 7k IQD prize money, while the runners-up received 5k IQD. In the second edition, because of the economical changes that accrued on the dinar, the winners were given 150k IQD and

4899-432: Was replaced by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1876, which has endured to the present day. The founders of the new League judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a franchise based system with exclusive membership, a strict limit on the number of teams, and each member having exclusive rights to their local market. The modest National League guarantee of

4970-423: Was reportedly because of such evidence that the EuroLeague adopted mandatory salary bands in September 2024. Promotion and relegation is used in international sports leagues such as in Europe , and many other parts of the world. It may be used in international sports tournaments. In tennis, the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup have promotion and relegation, with a 'World Group' (split into two divisions in

5041-426: Was set for the first Stars League season. Ever since the league began, it has been dominated by the four biggest clubs in Baghdad : Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya , Al-Shorta , Al-Talaba and Al-Zawraa , who together contest the Baghdad derbies . From the 1989–90 season until the 2005–06 season, the league was won by one of the four Baghdad teams every time. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq , players started to leave

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