Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Padideh will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Reza Vafaei 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.
Shots: 4. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
5 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Ehsan 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.
Squad24 May 2027
Reza Vafaei 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Padideh, and both men came out saying it was fine.
In brief
SquadThe manager has not finished forgetting Mohammad Ebrahimi's mistake
Ehsan 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.
Squad26 Apr 2027
Reza Vafaei 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 17 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.
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Padideh lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Padideh heard it as anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh 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 Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad1 Mar 2027
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reza Vafaei 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 1, 76 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mohammad Shojaei provided it, and the 10.00 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
4 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
4 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Position 1, 67 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
A brace, and Ehsan Karimi takes the afternoon — 8.40
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ehsan Karimi provided it, and the 8.40 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The chase for Abolfazl Mohammadi ended with $610.0K changing hands and Zob Ahan out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
The terraces18 Jan 2027
Padideh spend $610.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $610.0K for Abolfazl Mohammadi, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Squad18 Jan 2027
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reza Vafaei 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.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Padideh pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
Ehsan 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Reza Vafaei 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.
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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Naft Tehran spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Marked 8.20 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad30 Nov 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Mohammad Shojaei's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
6 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Match10 Oct 2026
Another one collected away from home
7 on the bounce on the road for Padideh. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Iván Leszczuk in the middle of it, and Foolad unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.45, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Shahriar Taremi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.28. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
8.22. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Esteghlal Khuzestan will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Padideh were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.67 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
19 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.
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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Padideh, another week without a signature from Mohammad Shojaei.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ehsan Karimi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Alireza Mohammadi has his answer from Padideh; what he does with it is the next window’s story.