Iran

8 entrants predicted Iran to win the World Cup

177 entrants are supporting Iran

Top 10 Iran supporters

Pos	Name	Po
1	Hadi Sajjadpour Switzerland	99
2	Parham USA	97
2	Cachal Haven	97
4	Shahab Jamshidi Iran-Tehran	93
5	hamidreza Iran,hamedan,malayer	89
6	SId  Minnesota	87
6	Ali Taheri Australia	87
6	Pearo Glasga	87
6	Ali Ghanavi UnisonOnline.com	87
10	Michael Johns Southwell	86

Group matches

Team profile

• Coach: Branko Ivankovic (2003-)
• World Cup appearances: 3
• First World Cup: 1978
• Best performance at World Cup: Round 1, 1978 and 1998

The Iran national football team is the national team of Iran and is controlled by the Islamic Republic of Iran Football Federation and is one of the strongest teams in Asia. Iran play their home games in the massive Azadi (Freedom) Stadium which was built in the mid 1970s with a capacity of over 100,000. Iranian national football team is also known as Team Melli.

Iran won the Asian Cup three times in a row (1968, 1972, 1976) and have finished third four times. In 1978, Iran made its first appearance in the World Cup and lost two of their three group stage games against the Netherlands and Peru. However, they managed to create a shocker by drawing against the famous Scotland side 1-1 on a late Iraj Danaeifard goal.

After the 1979 Revolution, football was somewhat neglected and cast aside during the mid 1980s due to internal unrest and the Iran-Iraq War although rumors saying that Iran didn't play football during that time are untrue. Football managed to make its revival in the early 1990s with new talents like Ali Daei, Mehdi Mahdavikia, Khodadad Azizi and Karim Bagheri. In November 1997, Iran qualified for the 1998 World Cup after beating Australia in a controversial playoff series. Both games finished undecided, but Iran qualified due to the away goals rule. Iran held Australia to a 1-1 draw at home, and a 2-2 draw in Melbourne. Because Iran scored more away goals than Australia, they qualified for the 1998 World Cup. Iran recorded their first win in the World Cup final tournament in 1998, 2-1 against the USA.

This Iran vs USA World Cup match was preheated with much excitement on both sides because of the countries' political stance on each other after the revolution in Iran. However, in an act of defiance against all forms of hatred or politics in sports both sides took ceremonial pictures embracing each other and gave each other gifts and flowers before kickoff.

The number of "footy fanatics" in Iran has increased exponentially in the last two decades. Football can be seen everywhere in Iran. Kids playing football in narrow streets is a very common sight, particularly south and east of Tehran. This style of football named "gol-koocheak" ("small-net") is normally played with the signature purple or red and white balls sold almost in every Iranian "dokoon" or convenience store. Street football is usually played with "dolayeh" ("two-layered") or "selayeh" (triple-layered) plastic balls, because the single rubber ball alone is hard to control. One plastic ball is cut and the other is forced into its hard plastic shell to make a "dolayeh" plastic ball. Because street football is played in small and closed areas (and often with very small nets), children who play football in Iran's streets and similarly Iranian footballers are technically gifted.

On June 8, 2005, Iran together with Japan became the first country to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, making it Iran's 3rd appearance on the world stage of football. The qualification round both in 2001 and 2004-05 resulted in mass celebrations, hysteria and rioting, causing internal chaos and unrest between youth and government officials.

Iran are, as of 2006, ranked within the edge of Top 20 of the FIFA World Rankings with its current ranking at #22.

World Cup record

• 1930 to 1970 - Did not enter
• 1974 - Did not qualify
• 1978 - Round 1
• 1982 - Withdrew
• 1986 - Disqualified for refusal to play at neutral sites
• 1990 - Did not qualify
• 1994 - Did not qualify
• 1998 - Round 1
• 2002 - Did not qualify
• 2006 - Qualified

Encyclopedia information from Wikipedia article 'Iran national football team'. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.