Crowds of Iranian football supporters have flocked to welcome Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo to Tehran - even chasing his team's bus.

The 38-year-old forward is there with Saudi club Al Nassr, who are taking on Persepolis on Tuesday evening.

Fans gathered outside his hotel for a rare opportunity to see the legend close up.

Waving replicas shirts, they celebrated the end of a ban that had kept Saudi teams away for seven years.

Given Iran's turbulent diplomatic relationships with the rest of the world, top football clubs and their stars rarely visit the country.

Managers, sponsors and insurance companies are reluctant to let their talent travel to Iran after assessing the risks that come with such visits.

Al Nassr are the first Saudi club to come to Iran since 2016, when a group of hardline Iranian militiamen called the Basij - part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - attacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

After that, teams from Saudi Arabia refused to travel to Iran for any international sports competition, saying their security was not guaranteed.

But after seven years of playing matches in neutral locations, Saudi Arabia has now lifted its ban in time for this Asian Football Confederation Champions (AFC) League fixture.

Two major changes this year have made all this possible. Firstly, Iran and Saudi Arabia restored their diplomatic relationship in a deal brokered by China. Secondly, Saudi clubs began investing heavily in hiring world-class football talent in their domestic league.

The AFC announced that for this year's Champions League, an agreement had been reached and teams from Iran and Saudi Arabia would face each other on a home and away basis. And then there was the draw and it could not get any bigger than this: Al Nassr and Ronaldo coming to Tehran to face Persepolis on matchday one.

Photos showed wild scenes as fans crowded outside the team hotel and raced after the team bus.

The dates for the AFC Champions League matches were set from a month ago and the timing may all be a coincidence - but the Islamic Republic government would welcome any news that would distract the public from focusing on deeper issues.

The match comes just two days after the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini - a young women killed in the custody of Iran's morality police - which sparked bloody nationwide protests last year.

And ironically, as the Al Nassr plane landed in Tehran, there was another plane flying in the opposite direction. The passengers of the flight heading to Doha were five US citizens, flying home as part of a prisoner swap mediated by Qatar after spending years in Iranian jails.

Football experts would say that in order to create drama and a healthy competition in the west of the continent, Saudi clubs would like to face a challenge and their main opponents would be teams from Iran.

However, there is a catch: Tuesday night's match is being played behind closed doors, depriving Persepolis of their passionate fan support against their Saudi rivals.

The decision was imposed by the AFC as punishment for a social media post by the club in 2020 that caused offence to an Indian team.

As a result, it seems that regardless of the result of the game, the Saudis have already won it off the pitch. (BBC)

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