That has raised expectations at home that this is the group of players capable of ending a 47-year wait to add to the country’s three Asian titles.

And Ghoddos said Ghalenoei, a former national team midfielder, had “changed the way we look at football”.

“Iran is a football-crazy country and the fans expect a lot from us, so there is pressure to win the tournament,” Ghoddos told the Post. “But we want to achieve great things, the pressure we put on ourselves is the only pressure that matters.”

For Ghoddos, who was born in Sweden and has spent his entire career in Europe, that pressure is a permanent companion, in the form of his duty to enhance the credibility of Iranian footballers outside Asia, and act as an ambassador for the country away from the field.

“I feel a responsibility to show we are very good people, Iranians do not cause problems, and I think we have a good reputation in football,” he said. “People know Iranian players are technical, skilful, and right-minded.

“But it goes deeper than that - you see in movies, they are always trying to make Iranians the bad guys. That does not reflect the people we are.

“At the World Cup, it felt like us against everyone. We are not feeling it so much now, but we are united want to achieve one thing together.”

Ghoddos, who scored in a 5-0 friendly win over Indonesia on Tuesday, plays for Brentford in the English Premier League. A potent Iran attack also draws on talent from Feyenoord, Porto, and Roma, in the shape of Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Mehdi Taremi, and Sardar Azmoun, respectively.

“In the past, European clubs were reluctant to take Asian players,” Ghoddos said. “If two players of equal ability were available, one from Brazil, and one from Iran, clubs would take the Brazilian. It was not racism, just that it felt safer.

“Now, clubs are taking chances on players from Iran, and Asia, and it is paying off.”

Ghoddos was “super-happy” with his decision to declare for Iran, the country of his parents’ birth, in 2017, after representing Sweden in two friendlies earlier the same year.

“When I went to my first training camp, I met some of my cousins for the first time,” Ghoddos said. “I met my grandparents, who had only seen me as a baby. It means a lot to my family, and they are so proud I play for the national team.”

Ghoddos is sufficiently in touch with Iran and its unsettled political climate to acknowledge the value of “doing things in Qatar that make people happy, and stop them thinking about their issues and problems, for even one second”.

In December, women were allowed into the Tehran derby between Persepolis and Esteghal, for the first time since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The 3,000 females were seated separately from the men, however, in a country blighted by prolonged violence after the 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly flouting Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.

“I do not like to mix football with politics, but it is a sport everybody should enjoy, so it [women attending derby fixture] is definitely a step in the right direction,” Ghoddos said.

The 29-year-old views record four-times champions Japan as the greatest threat to Iran’s trophy chances, but is “not under-estimating anyone”, ahead of group fixtures against Palestine, Hong Kong and United Arab Emirates over the next fortnight.

The January 20 date with Hong Kong comes soon after a 4-0 win for Iran when the sides played in Tehran.

“We will take them very seriously,” Ghoddos said. “They were a strong team and made it difficult for us, and they have been in camp a long time, training and studying their opponents.”

Ghoddos played at the past two World Cups, and was a member of the Iran squad that lost a 2019 Asian Cup semi-final against Japan.

“Winning the Asian Cup would be the biggest thing I have done,” he said. “I do not want to see myself as a hero, I am only a football player.

“But I would love that when Iranian people think about football, they think about me as one of the players who won the Asian Cup.”