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.
Majid Moharrami 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.
Squad29 May 2028
Milad Kor 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 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 Apr 2028
Words at Rah Ahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milad Kor 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. 106 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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
Words at Rah Ahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Milad Kor 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.
“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.
At 17 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.
48 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rah Ahan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 9.10 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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 Rah Ahan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Hamdan Al Junaibi has just signed for Rah Ahan, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Words at Rah Ahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reza Nekounam 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.
97 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al Ahli lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Ahli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 27 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.