Malavan Bandar Anzali

Malavan once carried the name of the shah — in the 1970s the club played as Malavan Bandar Pahlavi, until the 1979 revolution restored the port city's old name and the team became Malavan Bandar Anzali. The navy had already shaped the club by then: after Bahman Salehnia founded it in 1968 with a group of young athletes from the port, the Iranian navy took over as owner and sponsor, and the name stuck — Malavan means sailor.

Salehnia stayed close to the club for decades, coaching it on and off between 1968 and 2004. On the pitch, the team has never won the top flight; its best finish was fifth, in its first season in the Takht Jamshid Cup in 1973–74. What Malavan has done well is the Hazfi Cup, Iran's domestic knockout, lifting it three times — 1976, 1987 and 1991.

The home ground carries a name of its own weight. Ghayeghran died in a car accident in 1998, and Anzali kept his name on the gates.

Malavan's academy has sent players on to bigger stages — Saeid Ezzatollahi came through it before moving to Atlético Madrid's reserves and a run of clubs including Rostov and Reading. More recently, defender Daniyal Eiri, another academy product, earned his first call-up to the Iran squad in 2025. The last promotion came in 2022, when Maziar Zare, once a Malavan player himself, took the club back to the Azadegan League as manager. What the club is still chasing is what it has never had: a league title of its own.