Marked for Ehsan Pouraliganji
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings20 Sep 2027
Nicolás Oroz, 33, rolls back the years — 8.16
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.16 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Janderson is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Nicolás Oroz 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.
Squad20 Sep 2027
Tempers go at Saba
Hossein Karimi 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.
Squad20 Sep 2027
The manager makes an example of Vahid Mohammadi
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 39. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market30 Aug 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market30 Aug 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at Saba, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match28 Aug 2027
Saba make it 4 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Saba have 4 straight wins of it.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Henrique Poniewas is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad30 Aug 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market30 Aug 2027
Rah Ahan paid $270.0K and Saba took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Saba training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Nicolás Oroz 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Saba know it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad23 Aug 2027
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Two goals and a mark of 8.98 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Mehrdad Abdi: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Saba have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Janderson is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Match21 Aug 2027
Saba make it 3 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Saba have 3 straight wins of it.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Saba
Saeid Karimazar 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.
Match21 Aug 2027
Saba get the job done against Tractor
A 2‑1 win over Tractor, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Market23 Aug 2027
Rah Ahan are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Saba will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market2 Aug 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Saba can pretend not to have heard.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Saba
Nicolás Oroz 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.
Market2 Aug 2027
A conversation is coming this week. Saba will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Graduation day at Saba
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Milad Beiranvand 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.
Market2 Aug 2027
One of our own: Ehsan Khodadad joins the Saba first team
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ehsan Khodadad is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market2 Aug 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Saeid Cheshmi has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Squad2 Aug 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad2 Aug 2027
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Saba know it.
In brief
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Boardroom
Saba spend it where nobody looks
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Boardroom
The Saba production line keeps running
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom19 Jul 2027
Pressure builds in the Saba boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Squad19 Jul 2027
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad19 Jul 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market14 Jun 2027
The unthinkable, invoiced: Omid Hosseini sold
Padideh arrived with $550.0K and left with the best player in the building. The board will call it business; the queue at the ticket office will use other words.
The terraces14 Jun 2027
Supporters turn on the $550.0K sale of Omid Hosseini
He is going to Padideh, the club has $550.0K 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.
Squad14 Jun 2027
Tempers go at Saba
Hossein Karimi 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad12 Apr 2027
Tempers go at Saba
Kaveh Beiranvand 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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Ahmad Gholizadeh asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad22 Mar 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Saman Beiranvand
16 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saba lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad22 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market22 Mar 2027
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Saba, another week without a signature from Ehsan Pouraliganji.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 64. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad16 Nov 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad16 Nov 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match19 Sep 2026
No end in sight to Saba's wait for a win
8 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Saba has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.89, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad21 Sep 2026
A fracture rules Saman Gholizadeh out for 32 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Saba will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match19 Sep 2026
Saba leaking at the back
7 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad21 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saba this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match19 Sep 2026
Kaveh Yazdani among the goals in a wild afternoon
6 goals in one match, Kaveh Yazdani on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of Saba and Gostaresh Foulad.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of Alireza Moharrami at his very best
Marked 8.85. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Saba.
Squad21 Sep 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 49. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Saba
Vouria Khodadad 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 terraces10 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Milad Beiranvand 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.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Morteza Moharrami 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.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Marked 7.74 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Saba had the best player on the pitch.