page_title: Al-Athori SC
section_title: Central FA League Champions
hierarchical_section_title: Al-Athori SC / Central FA League Champions
caption_attribution_description: English: Al-Athori SC with the 1960 Iraq FA Cup Championship trophy.
context_page_description: Al-Athori Sports Club or Nadi Athori, is an Iraqi football club based in Baghdad that was founded in 1955. They were the champions of the Iraq Central FA League in the 1959–60 season and it is the club's only major honour. They were led by player-manager Ammo Baba in that season. They were relegated from the top division in 1962 and now compete in the lower divisions of Iraqi football. The club wears blue and white striped shirts. In 1974, the club was renamed to 'Al-Tamouz' but they returned to the name of Nadi Athori in 1987.
context_section_description: The first coach of the football team was Zia Shaoul, who took over in a player-coach role after the team was formed in 1955, but it was the appointment of Iraq’s most famous Assyrian son Ammo Baba in 1960 that brought the club in a different direction.  At the age of 24, Ammo was already an international and a regular in the Iraqi national team and had years of playing experience having represented the RAF Employees' (Assyrian) Club and C.C. Team in Habbaniya and Haris Al-Maliki and Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya in Baghdad. Ammo built a strong team around national players, strikers Gorgis Ismail and Kaku Gorgis and the defender Sargis Shimshon, who Ammo had played alongside in Habbaniya and the national team. The all-Assyrian club policy meant the club's first team and reserves only fielded Assyrians in their teams and this meant that the club's coaches had to depend on a small pool of players, mainly young players, a tradition followed by Basque clubs Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad. The Assyrian football team’s greatest achievement was to win the 1960 Iraq Central FA League (then called the Iraq Central FA First Division Cup) by beating Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya a team which included the likes of Hamid Fawzi, Jalil Shihab and fellow Assyrians Youra Eshaya and Edison Eshay by an emphatic 3-0 scoreline. The 1960 Iraq Central FA League squad included Wilson Shimshon, Nelson Issa, Eshaya Shalimon, William Shimshon, Wilson Daniel, Shalimon Odisho, Gorgis Ismail, Kaku Gorgis, Oshalim Yousef, William Shaoul, Daniel "Danno" Gorgis, Lawrence Butras, Ammo Baba (player-coach) and club captain Sargis Shimshon. The win brought the club’s first trophy but it also its end as the club's football team was dismantled when the top players from the team moved onto rival teams in Baghdad such as Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya, Farqa Al-Thalatha and Al-Maslaha.
  The club’s football team in the late 70s played under the name of Al-Tamouz, and it was where the likes of Adnan Dirjal, Ayoub Odisho, Maad Ibrahim, Mudhafar Jabar, Shahin Abbas, Radhi Shenaishel and the late Adnan Al-Sheikli first began their playing careers.
caption: Al-Athori players with the 1959–60 Iraq Central FA First Division Cup trophy.
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