Sepahan wins soccer cup for third year in a row

in which they played to a scoreless tie with the bottom team in the league, 18^th place Mes of Sarchesmeh.

It was the third consecutive championship for Sepahan and the fourth overall for the team in the 11 seasons in which it has been operating.  No other team has won more than two championships.

Esteghlal of Tehran, however, has been first twice, second three times and third three times—in other words, has been in the top three three-fourths of the seasons.  Sepahan has been runner-up once and never finished in third.

Ali Daei’s tenure as coach ended on a good note this year.  He took over Rah Ahan of Rey, a Tehran suburb, after it finished 15th last year.  The team was on its way to 15^th again at Now Ruz when Daei was in a serious auto accident.  Since then Rah Ahan has come alive and it finished in 11^th place, its best finish ever.

The table below shows the final standings after 34 games.  The top three teams are truly dominant clubs with 67, 66 and 66 points each while fourth place Saba of Qom had only 50 points.  And look at the goal differentials in the final column, showing how many more goals a team scored than gave up.  Again, the top three teams were truly dominant.

Under the rules in the Iran Premier League, the bottom three teams are relegated to a lower level league at the end of each season.  And the top three teams in the next league down are elevated to the Premier League.  Thus, Sepahan won’t have to face Mes of Sarchesmeh next year as it is headed down.

Traktorsazi of Tabriz finished second.  The team has become something of a nationalist favorite of Azeri-speakers in Iranian Azerbaijan.  A number of its games have seen nationalist outbursts that do not please the regime.

Its popularity could be seen in the attendance.  Traktorsazi drew 50,000 fans for its last game of the season in its home stadium while Sepahan drew 10,000 in Esfahan and no other game topped 7,000.

League table (overall)