Iraqi Golden Cup launches as Shepparton’s latest football tournament

Now, with eight teams registered and sponsors on board, the month-long event kicks off on Monday night at Shepparton Sports City’s Brauman St pitch.

“This idea came to me about a month and a half ago and I got inspired, I was flicking through Facebook and I saw a mosque playing soccer with their community,” Al Najar said.

“I said ‘why can’t I do this as well for my community’.

“So then I was like ‘let me do this cup for the boys’ and it turned out to be bigger than I expected. They’re loving it.”

Teams of eight players are split into two pools playing 60-minute matches.

Throughout the month, sides will square off in group stage games before the top two progress into the knockout phases, with semi-finals, a third-place playoff and the eventual grand final on October 26.

As soon as Al Najar put the word out, interest spread like wildfire.

This year’s inaugural tournament will be as the name suggests — Iraqi entrants only — but he received such overwhelming traction from all ethnicities that expanding the event in 2024 based on this year’s running hasn’t been ruled out.

“We said Iraqis only to play because we wanted it to be all around Iraqis, but obviously, we got a lot of non-Iraqis also interested to play, which will be something we will to account for next year,” he said.

“But this year, we just want it to be Iraqis so we can do something for us and all the people who want to come see us.

“I worked a lot on promotion and social media, making it look professional so it can look really official.

“In regards to support, we got 10 local Iraqi business owners only, as sponsors for the cup, really emphasising on everything being Iraqi related.

“My aim is to make this tournament as successful as possible; win, lose, I don’t really mind.

“If this is successful then for next year we know how to make this even bigger, maybe bring in Melbourne Iraqi teams, Sydney Iraqi teams to make it even better.

“And not limit it to Iraqis only, we’ll open to all Arabic backgrounds: Syrian, Lebanese people, everything.”