Pars Jonoubi JAM

Yellow and black on the kit, and the nickname followed without much debate: the Jam Bees. That much stayed constant while everything else about the club's identity took shape more slowly — Pars Jonoubi Jam was set up in 2007 by the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone, named for the South Pars gas field nearby, and only picked up its place in the Iranian league pyramid, in the Second Division, a few years after it existed on paper.

The club's one unmistakable moment came in 2016–17. Pars Jonoubi beat Esteghlal Ahvaz 2–1 to take the Azadegan League title and, with it, first promotion to the Persian Gulf Pro League. What followed surprised people who had watched them arrive: in their debut top-flight season they finished 5th. It did not hold. A 12th-place season came next, then relegation in 2019–20 after finishing 15th, and the club has been back in the Azadegan League since, short of the money and the management continuity that a return to the top tier would need.

Home matches are watched at Shohada Stadium in Jam, a ground that holds 15,000 — sizeable for a town this small. The fixture that still draws a full house is against Shahin Bushehr, the Bushehr Derby. Squad turnover has been steady rather than dramatic: Mehdi Turkman left for Sepahan in the winter of 2019–20, Rouhollah Seifollahi went to Foolad Khuzestan.

Pars Jonoubi Jam has no official website; word of team news travels through social media instead. For now the club sits in the Azadegan League, working out how to fund and coach its way back to the division it last saw in 2019–20.