Shams Azar Qazvin

Ali Goudarzi captained Shams Azar through its climb from Iran's lower divisions, a centre-back who chipped in with the goals that mattered before Saipa signed him away. That progression, third tier to second to the top flight inside four seasons, is the club's whole story in miniature.

The Qazvin provincial sports and youth department set the club up in September 2012 by buying a licence from Tehran side Kaveh, and for its first eight years it played as Caspian Qazvin. The current name arrived in 2020. A second licence purchase followed in September 2021, this one from Baderan, also of Tehran, which let the club field a reserve side in the Azadegan League while the first team pushed on above it.

That push produced the club's only trophy so far: the Azadegan League title in 2022–23, won after a ninth-place finish there the year before. Promotion sent Shams Azar into the Persian Gulf Pro League for the first time in 2023–24, and the team held its own, finishing eighth. The Hazfi Cup has been kinder to the underdog role than to the trophy cabinet — a last-32 exit that first season, then a run to the last 16 in 2024–25, no title yet either time.

Home games are played at the Sardar Azadegan Stadium in Qazvin, the team out in dark green and black. Rahman Jafari and Ali Asghar Aarabi were among the other names who carried the club through the promotion years before moving on in the following transfer windows, to Gol Gohar and elsewhere.

Eighth place, on debut, in a division the club had never previously reached.