Nader Jahanfard: It all began in 1930 when Iranian center forward Hossein Sadaghiani represented his country as the first ever Legionnaire to Europe.
 
(http://www.weltfussball.de/spieler_profil.php?id=52495).
Note: Sadaghiani played for the 2nd division Rapid Vienna of Austria before making it to Belgium.
 
In his first four years of service at Charleroi FC, Sadaghiani became the best goal getter of the Belgian league and was an important factor for his side winning the championship when he scored a hat trick against Bruxelles at the finals (1933), in front of a packed stadium!
Sadaghiani eventually moved to Fenerbace FC of Istanbul and shortly after returned to Iran to become the head coach of the national team.
However, Sadaghiani’s efforts for Iranian football as a missionary did not open the doors to other football players due to political tension and sturdy restrictions from the government and despite having some of the most talented players in Asia (Nasser Hejazi, Hassan Rowshan, Ali Parvin from Asian player of the century list and Parviz Ghelichkhani, Homayoon Behzadi, Parviz Dehdari, Andranik Eskandarian and Ebrahim Ashtiani just a few example of players who could play in the best leagues of the world if given the chance!), only a couple of players* received an opportunity to play in minor leagues of Europe and dream of playing abroad literally diminished and was put on hold for decades to come!
*(e.g.; Mohammad Reza Adelkhani of Taj FC played for several regional teams in Germany from 1966-72).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Adelkhani)
 

After Iranian revolution in 1979 and the end of an eight-year bloody war with Iraq, Iranian football was about to flourish and show the world what she was made of.
The late 80’s and early 90’s are known as the beginning of the pseudo-modern football in Iranian football.
With scores of outstanding players at hand, Iran was about to make history and become the biggest exporter of football talents in Asia and the floodgates were about to open when two exceptional players named; Ali Daei and karim Bagheri accepted an offer from Arminia Bielefeld of German Bundesliga in 1996.
A year later and with addition of 1996 Asian Player of the Year, khodadad Azizi to FC Coln, Iranian players started to receive the recognition they deserved and Iranian football seemed invincible!
Gradually but surely and with arrival of few talented foreign coaches into Iranian football, new talents were discovered and by the time Iran made it to the world cup (France ’98), Iranian footballers were the hottest commodity in Asian market!
The diminishing economy in Iran and overall lack of management on every level (sports and none sports related), eventually forced many players to leave Iran for a better future and in return many European and non European clubs managed to have the “Elite” catalog of players for fraction of the price!
In all, Iranian football was about to pay the price for the departure of these talents dearly. With start of the Professional or so called Premier league in Iran things turned around. What seemed to be a great idea at first became a nightmare when Iranian football federation and her Premier clubs did not follow their own manifesto.

Despite abundance of terrific players, absence of a healthy administration and a poorly structured system was about to ruin the party for a nation that lived through her football!
Things went chaotic when flood of juicy offers poured through the wealthy Arab countries of the Persian Gulf region and Iranian football clubs lost a handful their best players to Arab leagues!
By now the number of footballers who played in Europe were tripled and Iranian national team was benefiting from the services of such players as Mehdi Mahdavikia, Vahid Hashemian, Rahman Rezaei, Ali Daei and quite a few others who brought depth and experience to the national team.
Unfortunately the same could not be said about those who chose or forced to play in various inferior Arab leagues and clubs, and historically our “legion” lost so many good players to what is known as the “Dollar Syndrome”!
In 2001 we narrowly missed our third representation at world cup and were forced to follow the biggest global event through the airwaves and progressively many of our European based legionnaires got older and returned home.
By this time top clubs around the world turned their attention to other countries in Asia while Iranian football failed to press forward.
Japanese and Korean football however, benefited the most from this state of affairs and optimistically they owe their all around accomplishment to vigorous hard work and decades of solid planning.

In Iran, repeat failures on the youth and under 23 teams for years is the true eyewitness to our malfunction in management and organization areas.
“We neglected to pay attention to the basics”!
Eventually and against all odds we were able to make it to our third world cup appearance and enroot to Germany we were also able to book two more talents to Spain and England (Javad Nekounam and Andranik Teymourian).
But was that enough?
After our miserable presentation in Germany though, things turned towards worst. Iran was no more the shopping heaven it used to be and Iranian football moved towards a dark and gloomier future.
With FIFA watching our every move, “NO” immediate plan of progress in sight and a federation that is clueless about making things better and correctly, the outlook is all of a sudden in jeopardy!

And the future of the legionnaires…
 
With “wizard of Tehran”, who left his magic wand and reputation behind in Friedrichshafen, Rahman Rezaei reaching his end of football, Vahid Hashemian running out of fuel, Mehdi Mahdavikia’s uncertain future with Hamburg, and scores of talents who are “wasting away” South of the border, the task of carrying the torch is on the shoulder of couple of men who very well could be the last “great” hopes of carrying on with this mission!
Pragmatically it may be a long time before we can see the return of “glory” in our football.
 
And the message:
In 1992 American Presidential campaign, the Democratic strategist James Carville hung a sign in Bill Clinton’s Little Rock campaign office that read:
It’s the Economy, Stupid!
That little slogan eventually won the presidential race for Clinton and during his reign, America experienced one of the healthiest economies known to its history!
May be its time to ship that sign home.
Gentleman, fix the Economy and bring the glory back to everything. Including football!