Erbil SC
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Erbil SC

Erbil Sports Club (Kurdish: یانەی وەرزشیی ھەولێر, romanizedYaney Werzişîy Hewlêr, Arabic: نادي أربيل الرياضي) is an Iraqi professional sports club based in the city of Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq that plays in the Iraq Stars League, the first-tier of Iraqi football.

Erbil are one of the most successful teams in Iraq, and the most successful from the Kurdish region, having won the league title 4 times. In 2012, Erbil became the first Iraqi team to reach the final of the AFC Cup, a feat they repeated in 2014 AFC Cup but lost both times.

Erbil also fields a football team in the Kurdistan Premier League, as well as a team in the majority of sports across the country.

Erbil SC was founded on 3 November 1968, by the former Kurdistan-Iraq Football Association and spent decades in regional leagues and lower league competitions. The team finally qualified for the top division for the first time in the 1987-88 season, where they finished 15th out of 16th in the league, however the team escaped relegation as the FA decided to not relegate any team due to a planned expansion on the league. The following season, the FA adapted a bizarre league and playoff style, teams where split into one of four groups, where the top two teams from each group come together to play a knockout style playoff. Erbil surprisingly finished in the top ten. In the 1989-1990 season, Erbil would finish bottom of the league with only 8 points, however they would once again benefit from the FA deciding to increase the number of teams, and as such escaped relegation.

At the halfway stage of the 1990-91 season, Erbil were forced to withdraw from the competition due to the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. so the Iraq U19 team was brought in to play the remaining half of the season.

The club was allowed to stay in the league, after it was decided that their withdrawal was outside of their control in the previous season. In the 1991–92 season, Erbil finished bottom of the league with 19 points from 38 matches, however that season the FA decided that the bottom three teams would play a play-off to decide the relegated team, Erbil managed to survive the playoffs, meaning they managed to stay in the league despite finishing bottom for the third time in their young history.

Erbil would continue to avoid relegation for three more seasons, however their stint in the stars league came to an end in the 94-95 season where they finished in the bottom 12 teams, all of whom were relegated.

Erbil would spend the next four seasons in the second division, before winning the 1998-99 second division title, which earned them a return to the top flight ahead of the new Millennium. In their best ever result up to that point, Erbil finished 10th that season, with the team winning 70 points in a 50-game season. That same year, Erbil beat Nineveh side Makhmur 13-0 in the Iraqi FA Cup, which is the second-largest margin of victory in the competition's history.

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