Foolad Arena

The name on the badge and the name over the gate do not match. Fans call it Foolad Arena; the plaque reads Shuhada Foolad Khuzestan Stadium, a dedication to the province's war dead rather than a marketing exercise, and the club has never bothered to correct the mismatch.

Foolad Khuzestan broke ground on 2 December 2011 and did not open the doors until 13 November 2018, nearly seven years on a project the club priced at around 1,500 billion rials. First Vice President Es'haq Jahangiri turned up for the ceremony, a sign of how much weight Ahvaz — and Khuzestan more broadly, a province that supplied a disproportionate share of Iran's casualties in the war with Iraq — placed on the building.

Its one outing on the biggest domestic stage went badly. The 2019 Hazfi Cup final between Persepolis and Damash drew 30,000 through the gates, and Persepolis held on for a 1-0 win, but the match was halted for two hours and fifteen minutes when the crowd turned unruly — not the send-off Ahvaz had in mind for a stadium barely six months old. It has since hosted AFC Champions League qualifiers, among them a 2021 meeting with Al Ain of the UAE, giving Foolad's continental ambitions a home built to match them rather than a shared civic ground.