Noor Sabri Abbas Hassan

Noor Sabri Abbas Hassan (Arabic: نور صبري) (born 6 June 1984 in Baghdad) is an Iraqi football goalkeeper. He is currently playing for for Mes Kerman F.C. in Iran's Premier Football League, and is the main goalkeeper for the Iraq national football team.

Career

Noor Sabri was first selected for the Iraq national football team by Adnan Hamad for the WAFF Championship in Amman only a few days after his sixteenth birthday. The youngster had been playing in goal for Al-Khadimiya in the Iraqi first division, helping the Baghdad-based team to the 21st place in a 26-team league. However, after the team was relegated to the second division, due to the Iraqi Football Assosiacion to shorten the league to 16 teams, Al-Zawraa quickly snatched the player.

His displays for both club and the Iraqi Under-17s team earned him a place in the squad for the 2000 AFC Youth Championship in Tehran, where he was on the bench until the final game against Japan, replacing suspended goalkeeper Ahmed Ali Jaber. The Japanese attack caused many problems for him in the first half, and stumbled early on under a long cross leaving the ball to ricochet around the box in the ensuing melee before falling to Hisato Sato who, unmarked on the six-yard box completely sliced his volley. He was soon in trouble again, this time letting a corner squirm through his grasp after half an hour gone. Ishikawa could not react quickly enough at the far post, but Noor who had become better as the game went on, could do nothing about Japan’s equaliser in the 61st minute from an unstoppable header by substitute Yutaka Tahara. He kept Iraq in the game with some great saves later on before Emad Mohammed hit the golden goal winner.

Noor has since gone from strength to strength moving to Al-Zawraa after the Asian Youth Championship win in Tehran and winning himself a place in the Iraqi Olympic team under Bernd Stange and is currently Iraq’s number one goalkeeper and in July 2007, he helped Iraq reach the final of the 2007 Asian Cup by saving a crucial penalty in a shootout against South Korea in the semi-final.