Esteghlal FC

Nasser Hejazi guarded the goal for a club that, by the time he retired, had already changed its name twice. Founded in 1945 by a group of cycling enthusiasts, the side first went by Docharkheh Savaran, the Cyclists, before renaming itself Taj — the Crown — in 1949. It was under that royalist name that the club won the AFC Champions League in 1970. He went to two Olympics and the 1978 World Cup, and by the time Iran's 1979 revolution stripped the club of a name tied to the monarchy, he was already its defining figure. The club took the name Esteghlal, Independence, and has kept it since.

Esteghlal plays in blue and white, which earned it the nickname Capital Blues, and its home has been the Azadi Stadium, holding 78,116. Its record against Persepolis, the Tehran derby, is the fixture the city organises its football calendar around; locally it is also called Shahr-avard-e Tehran.

The trophies came in two distinct eras. As Taj, the club won the old Local League in 1971, the Takht Jamshid Cup in 1975 and that continental title in 1970. As Esteghlal, it has taken the domestic league nine times in total, most recently in 2021–22, and the Hazfi Cup a record eight times, the latest arriving in 2025.

Among the internationals who came through afterwards, Andranik Teymourian and Rouzbeh Cheshmi extended that World Cup thread into the following decade. But it is Hejazi's name that still opens most conversations about what Esteghlal has been.