‘Lion of Mesopotamia’: How Aymen Hussein beat tragedy to reach World Cup

It has been a long, relentless journey to the World Cup for Iraq’s centre-forward Aymen Hussein, who propelled his country to the tournament for the first time in 40 years when he scored a winning goal against Bolivia in Mexico in the qualifiers. When he was just 12 and already playing football for a local team, his father was brutally murdered while buying materials to build the family home. A few years after that, his older brother was kidnapped, and he has not been heard from since. …