Mohanad Ali

Youth career

Ali became interested in football as a child and started playing for a local team in the Baghdad Al-Jadida district called Timsah Al-Amin. He enrolled at the Ammo Baba Football School at the age of six without a trial after coaches had been impressed with the striker. He then joined the Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya youth team, and he represented them in the Al-Zawraa Youth Championship; he was top scorer at two local tournaments, and was then called up by the Iraq FA to play for Saad Hashim's under-14 team, and with an outstanding performance, he grabbed the attention of the managers of Al-Shorta.

Al-Shorta

Early years

On 24 September 2013, Ali signed a five-year contract with Al-Shorta and took the number 26 shirt. He became the youngest player in Iraqi Premier League history at 13 years and 279 days old when he made his competitive debut for Al-Shorta under Brazilian coach Lorival Santos in the 2013–14 Iraqi Premier League, being substituted onto the field on 85 minutes in the Baghdad Derby against Al-Talaba on 26 March 2014. Al-Shorta topped the league standings with 43 points from 21 games, although the league was ended prematurely due to the war situation in the country. In the 2014–15 season, Mohanad played in a four-team friendly competition called the Tournament for the Armed Forces, scoring a penalty in the semi-final shootout which Al-Shorta lost to Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya. Mohanad was given the number 8 shirt for the 2015–16 season under…

Youth

Ali made his debut for Iraq's Under-14s in 2013 at the age of just 13. He was the joint-top scorer at the 2013 Asian Youth Games with six goals in Nanjing in August 2013, where the Iraq beat Singapore, Kuwait and Thailand in the quarterfinals before they lost to Iran in the semis and the third-place playoff on penalties to North Korea. In the first ever edition of the AFC U-14 Championship in 2014 in Iran, Mohanad won the top-scorer award with six goals and his team won the cup. In the 2015 WAFF U-16 Championship, Mohanad won the top scorer award with five goals and his team won the championship.

Senior

He played his first match for the Iraq national team in a friendly against United Arab Emirates on 17 December 2017. He scored for Iraq in an unofficial friendly game against Iraqi Premier League club Naft Al-Junoob on 24 February 2018. His first and second international goals for Iraq were in a friendly match against Saudi Arabia on 28 February 2018. He played against Argentina on 11 October 2018, coming on as a second-half substitute. He was nominated by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) as one of the top young talents; he was described as the youngest player who has the potential to changing the shape of the game before 2019 AFC Asian Cup. He scored his seventh goal against Vietnam on 8 January 2019, and his eighth against Yemen on 12 January 2019, followed by a goal against Jordan to help Iraq win the 2019 International Friendship…

Ali is talented player with good technique and close control, who is an adept header of the ball, and who has an ability to score impressive goals, in the air or with either foot, courtesy of his shooting ability and positional sense. He is physically strong, and is gifted with dribbling skills, anticipation, and confidence in going at opponents with numerical superiority. He is also known for his speed, and his ability beat defenders with sudden turns, as well as his vision, which gave him the ability to link-up with and provide assists for teammates.

Ali is a Shammari Shia born in Baghdad. The former international striker Ali Salah is one of his cousins. Mohanad played under the name of his brother Hassan Ali during the 2015–16 and 2016–17 seasons due to an error in his passport. An Iraqi court ruling in 2017 allowed him to obtain a corrected passport, thus enabling him to represent Iraq again. In late September 2020 he tested positive for COVID-19.