Abstarct: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of coaches’ identity leadership on athletes’ team and individual performance, with the mediating role of team identity. The present study was descxriptive–correlational in nature and cross-sectional in terms of time. The statistical population consisted of all football plaxyers in Salah al-Din Province, from whom 179 plaxyers were selected as the sample using convenience sampling. The research instruments included three standard questionnaires: the Coach Identity Leadership questionnaire developed by Steffens et al. (2014), the Team Identity questionnaire by Bruner and Benson (2018), and the Individual and Team Performance questionnaire. Face and content validity of the instruments were confirmed baxsed on the opinions of ten experts and professors in sport management, and the reliability of the questionnaires was verified using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. To test the research hypotheses, structural equation modeling with a variance-baxsed approach was employed. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS version 23 and SmartPLS version 4 software. The results indicated that coaches’ identity leadership has a positive and significant effect on team identity, team performance, and individual performance of athletes. In addition, team identity had a positive and significant effect on both individual and team performance. The findings also revealed that team identity plays a mediating role in the relationship between coaches’ identity leadership and athletes’ team and individual performance. Coaches’ identity leadership directly enhances performance, and this effect is mediated through the strengthening of team identity. This suggests that successful performance requires athletes’ deep commitment to a shared understanding of “who we are” as a team. Therefore, it is recommended that coaches implement specific strategies to create distinctive team symbols, values, and narratives in order to strengthen plaxyers’ sense of belonging and commitment to the collective team identity, ultimately leading to improved performance outcomes.