Marked for Kaveh Jahanbakhsh
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match19 Sep 2026
Nowhere to hide for Padideh
2‑6 against Persepolis, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Reza Khodadad damages knee ligaments — 27 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
A fracture rules Mehdi Beiranvand out for 33 days
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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Pejman Noorafkan, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.15
A mark of 8.15 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Karim 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.
Match19 Sep 2026
8 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Padideh and Persepolis in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.11, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad21 Sep 2026
“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.
Boardroom21 Sep 2026
Nobody left the Padideh dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match5 Sep 2026
6‑0, and Saeid Noorafkan took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Padideh tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Match2 Sep 2026
The cup run ends for Padideh
0‑3 against Naft Tehran, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad7 Sep 2026
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
A brace, and Karim Yazdani takes the afternoon — 8.32
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Karim Yazdani provided it, and the 8.32 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The terraces7 Sep 2026
Padideh are taken apart by Naft Tehran — and the town wants answers
It finished 0-3. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Padideh can pretend not to have heard.
Squad7 Sep 2026
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Karim 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.55, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad17 Aug 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 Padideh this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Padideh training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Saeid Noorafkan 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.
Match15 Aug 2026
Naft Tehran made Padideh work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.20 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
A performance of 8.15 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Shahriar Torabi, and the manager let it.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Hossein Saki dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.