“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 The request is on a desk at Gostaresh Foulad, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Gostaresh Foulad is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danilo De Simone 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.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Gostaresh Foulad can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Mehdi Ebrahimi, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 7.76
A mark of 7.76 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
23 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Every paper's favourite story and every manager's least. What happened is being dealt with internally, which is the phrase clubs use when they would rather nobody asked again.
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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Mehdi Ebrahimi has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Marked 5.03. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
Marked 5.41. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
The words a physio says slowly. 28 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.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Gostaresh Foulad is running low.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Gostaresh Foulad can pretend not to have heard.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Gostaresh Foulad will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Majid Yazdani 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Kaishin Sekiguchi is living that version at Gostaresh Foulad, and it tends to show in the first month.
“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 Gostaresh Foulad, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danilo De Simone 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 59 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Two goals and a mark of 8.01 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danilo De Simone 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.
Position 15 and 7 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.
The terraces28 Sep 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 8 of the 25 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danilo De Simone 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Gostaresh Foulad can pretend not to have heard.
Two goals and a mark of 8.19 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Majid Yazdani 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.
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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Saba spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Gostaresh Foulad, and both men came out saying it was fine.
He is going to Zob Ahan, the club has $770.0K it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gostaresh Foulad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Danilo De Simone 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.
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.