Hussein Saeed

Saeed joined Al-Jamiea when he was 17 years old in 1975 with an invitation from the manager Jamal Salih who lived in Saeed's neighborhood. His first match for Al-Jamiea was in the 1975–76 Iraq FA Cup against Al-Shorta, which Al-Jamiea won 3–0. He scored his first league goal with the club against Al-Hilla in a 1–1 draw. The club eventually finished in 8th place. They came very close to achieve the league in the 1976–77 season but they settled in 2nd place in the league table behind Al-Zawra'a. In the 1977–78 season, Saeed scored two goals with his team finishing in 8th place. Al-Jamiea became known as Al-Talaba SC ahead of the 1978–79 season after merging with a new club of the same name, which saw Saeed reach the top three goalscorers of the league for the first time, netting six goals for Al-Talaba which made him the second top goalscorer behind Falah Hassan with only one goal and along with his teammate, Haris Mohammed, in 3rd. Al-Talaba finished in 3rd place in the table at 15 points. The season after, in 1979–80, Al-Talaba finished in 3rd place at 27 points in the league and reached the final of the 1979–80 Iraq FA Cup where they came up against Al-Jaish and lost on penalties 4–2 after a 1–1 draw. In the 1980–81 season, Al-Talaba won their first ever league title after tying with Al-Shorta on both points and goal difference in the end where the Iraq Football Association declared Al-Talaba as champions due to them having more wins than Al-Shorta. Hussein Saeed was the…

Saeed was called up from the Iraq national under-17 football team to the reserves team of the Iraq national under-20 football team, where he first participated in the 1975 AFC Youth Championship, in which Iraq shared the title with Iran after they had a goalless match in the final. In the 1976 edition, Saeed was called up by the team's new manager, Miodgard Stankovic, to be part of the first eleven, scoring four goals in Iraq's opening match, against Sri Lanka, and becoming the top goalscorer of the tournament with 7 goals. Iraq was knocked out in the quarterfinal, against North Korea. After the 4th Arabian Gulf Cup the managerial staff was changed and the Iraq Football Association assigned the Croatian manager, Lenko Grčić, as the new manager of the Iraq national football team, Saeed was called up to the national team, for the first time in his career, at the age of 18. He made his debut on 5 September 1976 in a friendly match against Saudi Arabia where they drew 0–0. He continued to play in the youth team because the manager, Miodgard Stankovic, was Yugoslavian, reaching an understanding with Grčić. Iraq achieved the 1977 AFC Youth Championship where Saeed scored the winning goal in the final, from a diving header in the 90th minute, against Iran in a 4–3 victory in Tehran. Saeed was also the top goalscorer of this edition with 9 goals, scoring his first national hat-trick against Afghanistan in Iraq's 5–1 win. The same team represented Iraq in the first edition of the…

Al-Talaba (1993)

After he left the office of vice president of Al-Talaba in 1992, the club finished the 1992–93 as winners of the league and the 2nd Umm al-Ma'arik Championship and the runners-up of the 1992–93 Iraq FA Cup. Before the start of the 1993–94 season, the team's manager, Ayoub Odisho, resigned which made the board look for a new manager to settle quickly which ended in assigning Saeed as the interim manager of the club. He coached the team through the first half of the league of 25 matches before re-signing Odisho. Saeed's last match as the manager ended in a 4–0 loss to the league leaders, Al-Zawra'a. He also led Al-Talaba to achieve the 3rd Umm al-Ma'arik Championship, which was held in September 1993, after defeating Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya in the final 2–1, achieving his first and only trophy as a manager.

Hussein Saeed was born on 21 January 1958 in Al Adhamiya, where most of the Al-Ubaid tribe lived, to a conservative Baghdadi family. The family moved from Al Adhamiya to live in Al-Iskan when his father, who had previously worked as a fabrics merchant, got a job in the Ministry of Construction and Housing. Hussein Saeed started playing football in the streets before joining Al-Iskan's youth center. He led them to an Iraq Youth Centers' Championship, scoring a hat-trick in a 4–2 win against Al-Zawra'a youth team and catching the eye of Dawoud Al-Azzawi, the manager of the Iraq national under-17 football team and Iraq national varsity football team. Al-Azzawi called him up to the varsity team and, in his first competitive tournament with the team, he won the gold medal in the 1975 Arab Schools Games in Egypt.