Finally , the current Captain of Team Melli, Javad Nekounam , broke Ali Daei’s record for the most number of matches while playing his 150th match against Qatar in Sydney.
Javad Nekounam , who started his international career in 2000 while a midfield player at Pas Tehran , has been consistently playing for Team Melli in the last 14 years in which he played in 2 World Cups (2006 , 2014) and 5 AFC Asian Cup ( 2000, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2015).
Nekounam is also the 4th highest scorer in Team Melli history , behind Ali Daei, Karim Bagheri and Ali Karimi , the 3 legendary stars of Iranian football. Nekounam has accumulated 37 goals , one less than Ali Karimi who is the third on the list.
Our sincere congratulation to Nekounam on this achievement.
| Season | Openin. | Subst. | Goals | Yellows | Reds |
| 2000 | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2001 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2002 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2003 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 2004 | 18 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
| 2005 | 11 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| 2006 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 2007 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| 2008 | 8 | 0 | 4 | 1 | 0 |
| 2009 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 0 |
| 2010 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 2011 | 10 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| 2012 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2013 | 8 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| 2014 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Total | 137 | 13 | 37 | 23 | 1 |
| By season | In opening squad | Substituted in | Goals | Yellow cards | Red cards | |||||