TEAM MELLI
 
Iran national football team (Persian: تیم ملی فوتبال مردان ایران‎, romanized: Tīm-e Melli-e Fūtbāl-e Mardān-e Īrān), recognised by FIFA as IR Iran, represents Iran in international football and is controlled by the Iran Football Federation. Between December 2014 until May 2018, Iran was the highest-ranked team in Asia, the longest continuous period of time that a team has held that distinction. At the continental level, Iran has won three Asian Cup championships in 1968, 1972 and 1976. The nation's best performance at the Olympics was reaching the quarterfinals at the 1976 Montreal Games. At the FIFA World Cup, Iran have qualified five times (1978, 1998, 2006, 2014 and 2018) and have never progressed beyond the group stages; they have won only two matches: against the United States in 1998 and Morocco in 2018.