Ishtartv.com - syriacpress.com

 03/12/2025

BAGHDAD / PHOENIX — Dyana Dawood’s selection to the Iraqi Women’s National Football Team is the kind of story that changes the map of possibility for an entire community. Born into an Assyrian family from Mosul in Nineveh Governorate, she left Iraq at the age of four with her parents and spent her formative years in Jordan, where she learned the game “playing with neighborhood kids, often being the only girl,” she told Ezidi Times in a recent interview. Her father, who coached in both Iraq and Jordan, encouraged her early instincts, and that support — combined with her own relentless drive — pushed her from street football to US academies, to university-level, and eventually to the profession level. And now to a historic national-team call-up.

By age 13, Dawood had entered the American youth academy system, eventually wearing the green of Chicago State University. There she logged 451 minutes in the 2021–22 season and refined the technical and tactical base that would carry her beyond college competition. Her progression through Niles West High School, multiple academies, and Chicago State charts a steady climb from raw street talent to a midfielder capable of meeting the demands of organized, competitive play.

After university, she continued to chase professional opportunities, including a period with Politehnica Timișoara in Romania. Those European minutes put her among a small but growing group of Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian women playing professionally overseas and provided the kind of experience national selectors increasingly value. Even time in smaller leagues can serve as a proving ground for diaspora talent, and Dawood’s European spell helped ready her for the next level.

That next level arrived in November 2025. Playing in the UPSL Women’s Arizona Conference with Next Level Soccer, Dawood accepted an invitation to join Iraq’s National Team for a training camp and the West Asian (WAFF) Women’s Championship. She is become the first Assyrian woman ever called up to Iraq’s senior women’s national side.

Her Assyrian identity has shaped her perspective as much as her footballing journey. “Assyrians are the indigenous people of Upper Mesopotamia, with a history of six to seven thousand years,” she told Ezidi Times. “Being from a minority background should always be motivating because you can decide how to represent and showcase your background to the world. Football doesn’t care where you’re from — you are judged by your performance.” That sentiment echoes the way she has carried herself publicly, using heritage as fuel rather than burden, and providing a visible role model for girls from Iraq’s many minority communities.

For Dawood, the call-up carries a sense of duty as well as pride. “It felt like a responsibility to push the team forward in the right direction,” she said. “It felt like a proud moment to represent my community, Mosul, and the country as a whole.” Her message to young players, especially those who might feel overlooked, is as straightforward as her own journey is long: “If I was able to do it, so can they.”

Her on-field profile matches the work ethic behind those words. Coaches describe her as reliable in midfield — disciplined in possession, willing to press, and comfortable linking defense to attack. Off the field she has co-founded a youth initiative and taken part in community outreach, aligning with a wider trend of modern players leveraging visibility for social impact. For girls across Iraq — Chaldean–Syriac–Assyrian, Yezidi, Kurdish, and others — her presence on the national roster is a practical invitation. The path to elite sport, her story suggests, can run through refugee neighborhoods, diasporic communities, small academies, and semi-professional American leagues just as much as through established domestic pipelines.

Her rise mirrors a broader shift in Iraqi women’s football. For years the sport relied heavily on futsal players, sparse domestic infrastructure, and little international exposure. But with the Iraqi Women’s National Team re-entering the FIFA World Ranking in 2024 and both FIFA and the Iraq Football Association investing in development and international scouting, the program is beginning to grow through a plural, more representative model. Dawood’s selection is both a product of that strategy and a signal that it is working.

What her legacy becomes — whether remembered primarily for the historic “first” or for the minutes she contributes on the pitch — will depend on how her career unfolds. What is already clear is that her call-up widens the doorway for others. In representing Iraq, she has made visible a new map of possibility, one in which belonging is not limited by birthplace, language, or heritage, and where every girl who sees herself in her story is reminded that talent, matched with opportunity and persistence, can travel a very long way.