History
The first national league in Iran after the revolution was founded in 1989 with the name of Qods League. Esteghlal could become the league champion.
In 1991, the national league was named to Azadegan League in honor of the Iranian prisoners of war who were released. The number of teams, playing in the league, varied from year to year. Pas and Saipa dominated the league in the first four years. Pas and Esteghlal both were also able to capture Asian Club Championships in the early 1990s. By the mid-90s Persepolis and Esteghlal regained their dominant form and the league champions in the period of 1995-2001 was either Esteghlal or Persepolis.
Until 2001 the league was the first-highest division football league in Iran, but that changed when the Iranian Football Federation decided to start a professional league. The IPL was created and since then, the Azadegan League became the second-highest division in the Iranian football league system.
Read more about this topic: Azadegan League
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)