The words a physio says slowly. 130 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persepolis can pretend not to have heard.
Persepolis asked and Siah Jamegan said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Pejman Vafaei was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Add another name to the list: Sepahan have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Soheil Sahraei. The answer from Persepolis has not changed — yet.
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Malavan scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 4 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Sepahan, and it is not being withdrawn.
$69.0K was the most the club would pay and Esteghlal were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Mohammad Torabi left the room before anybody could ask which.
139 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Persepolis lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Naft Tehran had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.98 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Persepolis can pretend not to have heard.
The fee is $1.6M, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Foolad drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Persepolis asked and Rah Ahan said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Hossein Kanaani and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Persepolis training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dániel Gera is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The deal with Foolad is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.08 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Hossein Kanaani and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Persepolis training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dániel Gera is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The name of Mohammad Hossein Momeni has come up in conversations Persepolis were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Igor Sergeev. 1‑0 against Foolad, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
In brief
Squad5 new faces, and Persepolis are still learning each other