Foolad Shahr Stadium

Fooladshahr sits on the edge of Isfahan, but the name belongs to the town, not the city next door, and the ground has answered to it only since 2008, when the Isfahan Physical Organisation bought it from Isfahan Steel Company and dropped the earlier names, Farah Bahman and Zob Complex. It opened on 1 June 1998 with room for 15,000, a modest ground built for a modest purpose: giving Zob Ahan a home outside Isfahan proper, close enough to draw the club's support without competing for a city already served by its own stadiums.

The rebuild came in two stages rather than one. Work to bring the ground up to Asian Football Confederation standard started in 2016, new floodlights and a modernised media centre rather than anything structural. The real change followed in 2018, when reconstruction lifted capacity to 20,000 — a third more than the stadium held when it opened, and still a fraction of what the bigger Isfahan venues hold, which keeps Fooladshahr the smaller, tighter alternative rather than a rival to them.

The pitch remains natural grass throughout, unremarkable by itself, but consistent with a ground that has never chased the scale of its neighbours. What has stayed constant is the tenant: Zob Ahan have played here since the opening match, and the stadium's identity has tracked the club's rather than the town's growth.