Saipa

The Shahid Dastgerdi Stadium holds 8,250 people, a modest arena for a club that has spent much of its history chasing bigger stages. Saipa moved its operations there from Karaj before the 2015–16 season, trading its old base for a home inside Tehran itself.

The club exists because of a car company: SAIPA Automobile bought the rights to a lower-division side called Shahid Abbasi on 1 February 1989 and rebuilt it under its own name and colours, orange and white. The investment paid off quickly. Between 1993 and 1995, Saipa won the league and Hazfi Cup double in 1993–94, then defended the title the following season, a run still referred to as the club's golden era. That side reached the last four of the Asian Club Championship in 1995.

The academy behind that generation produced Ali Karimi, who came through Saipa's youth ranks between 1991 and 1994. More recent honours have been smaller in scale, among them the Shohada Cup in 2019, and the club's rivalry with Persepolis has never carried the weight or the label attached to Tehran's other derby, the one between Persepolis and Esteghlal.

That gap between past and present sharpened at the end of the 2021–22 season, when Saipa dropped out of the Persian Gulf Pro League into the Azadegan League, 8,250 seats, and a golden era now three decades behind it.