Football arrived in Iran in the early 20th century and quickly became the most popular sport in the country. The national team has qualified for the FIFA World Cup multiple times and has produced players who go on to compete in the top leagues of Europe. Match days feel like national celebrations – families gather around televisions, streets go quiet and then erupt with noise when a goal is scored. One of the most beloved aspects of Iranian football culture is the roar of the crowd in the enormous Azadi Stadium in Tehran, which holds over 100,000 fans.
Freestyle wrestling in Iran has roots going back thousands of years. In ancient Persian culture, strength and wrestling skill were considered marks of great honour. Today Iranian wrestlers compete in international tournaments and at the Olympics with extraordinary success. The sport requires not just raw strength but remarkable flexibility, balance and tactical thinking – wrestlers must anticipate their opponent's moves and react in fractions of a second. Young wrestlers often begin training in traditional gymnasiums called 'zurkhaneh' – 'houses of strength' – where ancient exercises are performed to the beat of a drum.
The zurkhaneh is worth special attention. It is both a gymnasium and a cultural space, where athletes perform a set of traditional exercises – swinging heavy wooden clubs, spinning metal shields and doing rhythmic sit-ups – while a musician called a 'morshed' sits elevated above the floor, beating a drum and chanting verses of heroic Persian poetry. The combination of physical training and poetry is unlike any other sporting tradition in the world. UNESCO has placed zurkhaneh on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.