Friday evening. Azadi Stadium in Tehran. Surrounded by 80,000 people. Anyone who knows this cauldron of noise and passion quickly understands that football here is not merely a leisure activity. It is a valve, pure emotion. For the European observer, accustomed to the clinically clean productions of the Champions League or the perfectly organized Bundesliga, Iranian football often feels like a culture shock. Yet exactly in this shock lies the fascination of the Persian Gulf Pro League.
While in Europe the game is increasingly becoming a science, where every running path is calculated and every decision is reviewed for minutes by VAR, football in Iran retains a certain rawness. It is a game steered less by the head and more by the gut. This immediacy is both a stylistic feature and a mirror of society alike.
The Need for Flow
In psychology, there is the concept of "flow." It is this state of total immersion where everything runs automatically, without interruption, without hesitation. Fans hate nothing more than when this flow is artificially interrupted.
In Europe, legislators and associations tend to regulate this flow in the name of order and safety. In football, we know this from the Video Assistant Referee, who often freezes the celebration after a goal for two minutes. In American football, this is taken to the extreme with seemingly endless commercial breaks. Here, the last minute of playing time often lasts over 20 minutes in real time.
But in other areas too, we Europeans regularly encounter artificial interruptions that slow down the flow of the game. Take the German market for slot machines in casinos, for example. More and more people are looking for ‘Slots ohne 5 Sekunden Regel spielen’—which means playing slots without the mandatory five-second break. This mandatory 5-second pause was established by the gambling authority to artificially interrupt the flow of the game and thus its dynamics.
No matter where, no matter how; no one wants their leisure experience to be slowed down by artificial hurdles. We all want action, reaction, and rhythm. The Persian Gulf Pro League does exactly that. It offers this unfiltered rhythm even more intensely than its Western counterparts. When Persepolis plays against Esteghlal, there are no tactical lulls. The game surges back and forth, driven by the energy of the stands, and mistakes are not corrected by systems, but ironed out by even more effort.
Between Order and Persian Improvisation
If one compares the football cultures of Europe and Iran, one encounters fundamental differences in the approach to rules and structures. European football is world-renowned for its efficiency and tactical discipline. It reflects the desire for control. Nothing is left to chance. The game is often dissected until every unpredictability is eliminated. This ensures high quality but often strips the game of its soul.
Iranian football, on the other hand, is the realm of improvisation. Players like Mehdi Taremi or Sardar Azmoun did not find their way into the European elite because they were the best students of tactics, but because they are instinct players. They learned to act lightning-fast in confusing situations. In Iran, one doesn't wait for the perfect gap; one forces it. This mentality makes for games that may be tactically unclean, but incredibly dynamic.
The Role of Individualists
This dynamic environment shapes a very specific type of player. Since the system in Iranian football is often less rigid, more responsibility lies on the shoulders of the individual. This promotes the development of technically skilled individualists. Dribbling here is not a luxury, but often the only way to crack defensive lines that consist more of physical hardness than zonal marking.
For scouts from Europe, the Iranian market is therefore a goldmine that is often underestimated. Here they find players who are resistant to stress. Anyone who can survive the Tehran Derby won't be shocked by an away game in Dortmund or Manchester either. Mental toughness, paired with the ability to make decisions without long pauses for thought, has become an export good of Iranian football.
What We Can Learn from the Chaos
Of course, professionalization in European football has raised the level. But in the endeavor to make the game perfect and flawless, we have perhaps forgotten that football also thrives on the imperfect. On the element of surprise that arises when not everything is regulated.
Week after week, it shows that football in Iran lives, breathes, and fights. It is loud, sometimes chaotic, and often unpredictable. But it is never boring. Perhaps Germans and Europeans can take a leaf out of this book regarding mentality. Look less at the stopwatch and the rulebook, and let the game take its natural course more. Because at the end of the day, on the pitch and in life, it is the uninterrupted rhythm that captivates us the most.
