Ali Daei

Ali Daei is an Iranian former footballer and manager who was born in Ardabil on 21 March 1969.¹² A striker who captained Iran, he scored 108 international goals, a world record that stood until 2021, and was the first man to reach a hundred international goals.¹ With Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin he became the first Asian player to play, and to score, in the UEFA Champions League.¹

Daei was born in Ardabil to an Iranian Azerbaijani family.¹ He studied materials engineering at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, graduating while his football career was already under way.¹

Daei began with Esteghlal Ardabil in his home city, then played for Taxirani and Bank Tejarat in Tehran before joining Persepolis in 1994.¹ After a season at Al Sadd in Qatar he moved to Germany with Arminia Bielefeld in 1997, alongside his compatriot Karim Bagheri, and then to Bayern Munich, with whom he won the Bundesliga in 1998–99 although his playing time was limited.¹ At Hertha Berlin he scored twice against Chelsea in the Champions League in September 1999 and once against AC Milan at the San Siro.¹ He returned to Iran via Al Shabab in the Emirates, playing again for Persepolis and for Saba Battery, and finished his career as player-manager of Saipa, retiring in May 2007 after winning the league title.¹

Daei captained Iran from 2000 to 2006 and played at the 1998 and 2006 World Cups.¹ His 108 goals in 148 internationals made him the most prolific scorer in international football history until Cristiano Ronaldo passed the mark in 2021; he had become the first man to score a hundred international goals in November 2004.¹ The Arabic article gives the older figures of 149 caps and 109 goals; the English article's corrected totals are followed here.²¹ He was a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador from 2001, served on FIFA's Football Committee from 2007 to 2013, and was inducted into the Asian Football Hall of Fame in 2014.¹

Daei managed Saipa, then the Iran national team in 2008–09, and later Persepolis, Rah Ahan, Saba Qom and Naft Tehran, winning the Hazfi Cup with Persepolis and again with Naft Tehran in 2017, before a final spell at Saipa ended in 2019.¹

This section presents the positions found in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum. The English article has a dedicated Religion section, which states that Daei is a follower of Shia Islam and cites The Irish Times of 7 November 2001 for the account of his refusing, while at Bayern Munich, to hold a glass of beer for an Erdinger advertisement because alcohol is forbidden in his religion.¹ The Arabic article's infobox independently gives his religion as al-Shi'a; that value travels with Wikidata into other editions' infoboxes and is counted as one source family beside the English article's text tradition.² Under the museum's Shia-mapping rule, the two families attesting "Shia" for him personally, with Twelver branch context throughout, are recorded as shia-twelver with the mapping stated in the data record.¹² The English article also recounts that in December 2022 a flight carrying his wife and daughter was forced to land in Iran after his public support for the protest movement, a report carried by the state news agency IRNA.¹

• Ali Daei — English Wikipedia¹
• Ali Daei — Arabic Wikipedia²