Paykan

Paykan sit in the Azadegan League.

The team grew out of a car plant. Iran Khodro, then known as Iran National, backed the club as a way to keep its workforce fit and to put its name in front of the public, and named the side after its bestselling model, the Paykan. The club played under that link for years, won the Tehran Province League in 1969, then collapsed the following year in a dispute between players and management. Most of the squad walked out to Persepolis, and the football side of Paykan disappeared for three decades before the company bought back into the game in 2000 through the shell of another Tehran club, Bahman.

The one major trophy in the cabinet dates back further still, an Iran Championship Cup win in 1968, before the collapse. Since the 2000 return, the honours have come from the second division: Azadegan League titles in 2011–12 and 2015–16, the two spells that put the club back among Iran's elite.

Home games are played at the Shahid Dastgerdi Stadium, which holds 8,250, smaller than the 25,000-capacity Shahr-e Qods ground the club has also used.

No name is tied to Paykan more closely than Mohammad Reza Tahmasebi's. He first joined in 2001, left and returned twice more, and across spells that stretched to 2014 built up 240 appearances and 32 goals, both club records. He later stayed on to coach the side he had spent most of his playing career serving.