Marked for Giuseppe D'Auria
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad31 Jul 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sirvan Ghorbani
52 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Esteghlal Ahvaz lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad31 Jul 2028
A fracture rules Akbar Safarzadeh out for 128 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Esteghlal Ahvaz will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom31 Jul 2028
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Esteghlal Ahvaz is running low.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match12 Jun 2028
Every point is an argument now for Esteghlal Ahvaz
Position 15 and 18 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Market12 Jun 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Esteghlal Ahvaz, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market12 Jun 2028
The paperwork is done: Yuta Miyahara joins from Foolad in a deal worth $850.0K. Now comes the harder part.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Saman Fallah in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Esteghlal Ahvaz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces12 Jun 2028
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Yuta Miyahara from Foolad for $850.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Squad12 Jun 2028
Words at Esteghlal Ahvaz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hasan Jafari 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad10 Apr 2028
Walter Montoya 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.
Squad10 Apr 2028
Hasan Jafari falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad10 Apr 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mehrdad Abdi, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Feb 2028
Sirvan Ghorbani damages knee ligaments — 36 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 36 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.
Boardroom7 Feb 2028
Esteghlal Ahvaz interviewed the field and appointed the corridor: Interim Coach keeps the job he had been doing in all but title. Sometimes the safest pair of hands is the one already holding the wheel.
Market7 Feb 2028
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Esteghlal Ahvaz is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Match5 Feb 2028
No end in sight to Esteghlal Ahvaz's wait for a win
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Esteghlal Ahvaz has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Saman Fallah in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Esteghlal Ahvaz this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Feb 2028
A move Giuseppe D'Auria would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Giuseppe D'Auria is living that version at Esteghlal Ahvaz, and it tends to show in the first month.
Squad7 Feb 2028
Words at Esteghlal Ahvaz training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hasan Jafari 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.
Match5 Feb 2028
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Match5 Feb 2028
Rah Ahan left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad16 Aug 2027
The words a physio says slowly. 33 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.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 52 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Emanuele Scipioni is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.