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Abu Dhabi: Iraqi midfielder Nashat Akram was at the centre of a political dialogue between Iraq and Britain, a senior Iraqi football official said yesterday.
Akram, the former Al Ain midfielder, had been signed on by Manchester City earlier this month, but the British Labour authorities did not grant him a work permit on the ground that no player with a national team ranked below 50 by Fifa can be granted a work permit in Britain.
"That is not true. We have discovered that players with Fifa rankings less than that of Iraq are playing in the Premier League," Hussain Saeed, the president of the Iraqi Football Association, said yesterday.
"We have approached the British Embassy in Baghdad and asked for the reasons that prevented Akram from playing as a professional in England and also if there were some political issues to it," Saeed added.
Hussain also said that efforts were on to reach at a compromise between Manchester City and Al Ain so that the UAE club could retain the services of their gifted midfielder.
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