“I wouldn’t say I’ve taken the most conventional route,” Ali al-Hamadi says of his journey to this point. Even then it feels as though he is underselling it. The 21-year-old AFC Wimbledon striker was born in Maysan, Iraq, but at the age of one he fled the war-torn country with his then teenage mother, Asseel. A few months earlier, his father, Ibrahim, who carries scars from the torture of being imprisoned by Saddam Hussein for protesting against the dictator’s regime, was granted asylum in Liverpool.
“I feel like it’s a special part of me that gives me an edge, a bit more hunger and a lot more perspective on things because of the sacrifices my family had to make,” al-Hamadi says. “I always have that in the back of my mind.”
