Dundee United have signed Iraq midfielder Zidane Iqbal from Utrecht, with manager Jim Goodwin hailing him as a player of “real pedigree” who “is off the back of a successful World Cup”.<\/p>\n
\u200cThe 23-year-old, who came through the youth ranks with Manchester United, had a year left of his contract with the Dutch club and has signed for two years with the Tannadice club, with an option of another 12 months.<\/p>\n
“We feel he adds something different and can occupy different positions within our midfield ranks,” Goodwin told his club website.<\/p>\n
Iqbal, who has 28 caps, made his first-team debut for Manchester United as a late substitute in a Champions League match against Young Boys in December 2021.<\/p>\n
But that was his only appearance for the Premier League club and he moved to Utrecht in 2023.<\/p>\n
He made only seven appearances last season and has been a second-half substitute in two of their four matches this season, the latest being Sunday’s 6-1 home thrashing by PSV Eindoven.<\/p>\n
Iqbal became the first player of Pakistani heritage to appear in a World Cup finals when he came on against Norway this summer.<\/p>\n
He is an international team mate of United right-back Dario Naamo, who missed out on a place in the World Cup squad in the summer.<\/p>\n
Iqbal said: “My conversations with the manager have been positive and I’m excited to meet my new teammates and the rest of the staff.<\/p>\n
“Me and my family have seen the stadium and training ground today and that gives you that extra feel to the place and where I’m going to be playing every week.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dundee United have signed Iraq midfielder Zidane Iqbal from Utrecht, with manager Jim Goodwin hailing him as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-276944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iraq"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117208233087823657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}