Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rah Ahan they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Pejman Ebrahimi 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.
Nobody at Rah Ahan will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Mohamed Ghaname is living that version at Rah Ahan, and it tends to show in the first month.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rah Ahan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad10 Jan 2028
Words at Rah Ahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Omid Khodadad 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Ahmad Dejagah. 1‑0 against Esteghlal Khuzestan, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Rah Ahan are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Rah Ahan, and 4 appearances in 29 say he has earned the hearing.
“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 The request is on a desk at Padideh, and it is not being withdrawn.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 Padideh 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.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sardar Hosseini 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 words a physio says slowly. 34 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.
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.
At 18 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.
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Padideh will not try tonight.
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alireza Nazi 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Morteza Noorafkan provided it, and the 8.19 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“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 Padideh, 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 Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Hamed Al-Shanqeeti is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
“I watch every Padideh game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Naft Tehran runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.