June 18, 2025
The Traktor soccer club in Tabriz has won the national championship running away, bringing untold joy to a city that has never before seen a soccer championship—and bringing anything but joy to the regime, because the team is seen as the embodiment of Turkic national spirit.
. . . 1st year coach
What’s more, the team won under the direction of its new coach, Dragan Skocic, a Croat who was hired by Traktor right after he was fired as coach of the national team, despite his winning record. In the view of many, Iranian Azerbaijanis have just poked a finger in both eyes of their Persian overlords.
It is the first time in 10 years that a Tehran-based team has not won the league championship.
In 55 years of Iranian soccer, Traktor had never before won a championship. This year, it not only won, it won big. It wrapped up the championship with two weeks left in the season. It won 21 of its 30 matches, losing four and tying five. Amazingly, it did not lose a single game on the road. It ended the season with 68 points, leaving two hated rivals, Sepahan of Esfahan and Persepolis of Tehran far behind, with only 60 points each. Sepahan took second place based on goal differential.
Traktor has been unofficially adopted in recent years as an expression of Azerbaijani culture. Fans fill the stands singing nationalist songs in Azerbaijani and often chanting anti-regime slogans, like “Marg bar dictator” (Death to the dictator). The team’s cheerleaders dress in Azerbaijani garb.
After snagging the championship, the team sponsored a victory party in its home stadium May 15. The event was due to start at 5 p.m. The fans started turning out at 10 a.m. and had packed the stands by 2 p.m., demonstrating to anyone who might doubt it that Traktor brings hope, unity and voice—lots of voice—to millions of Iranian Azerbaijanis, especially as they sing the team anthem, whose chorus is:
Azerbaijan is our land, Tractor is our pride,
Courtesy and honor is our slogan,
Tractor is our pride.
Traktor was founded in 1970 by the state tractor manufacturing company based in Tabriz, hence the name, even though the team is no longer owned by the company.
the fans chant in Azarbaijani. (And they chant in favor of the “Arabian Gulf.”
The Traktor fans of today see themselves as a people with their own language, culture and history long discriminated against and marginalized by governments (both post- and pre-Islamic revolution). Supporting the soccer team has become a way to push back and assert Azeri pride and identity (songs recall ancient heroes), advocate for more representation in Iran (chants in 2012 demanded a better response from the government after a major earthquake) and, sometimes, simply to annoy the powers-that-be.
It is not surprising that there is ire from Tehran when fans chant slogans invoking the names of capitals from other countries. “Tabriz, Baku, Ankara, our path leads elsewhere than the path of the Persians.” Shouting that the “Persian Gulf” should be renamed the “Arabian Gulf” is also a surefire way to upset many in the capital.
The national government, suspicious of large crowds even when they are gathered to support the national team, are wary of Traktor’s pulling power. This season, the average attendance at Traktor’s home games in Tabriz was 42,077. Second place in the attendance sweepstakes went to Persepolis, which drew an average of only 16,536 fans to its home games in the capital’s cavernous Azadi Stadium.
before the official event to hail the team was even scheduled to begin.
