It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Vouria Vafaei wants continental football; whether Padideh can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Saeid Shojaei 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kaveh Beiranvand is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Marked 8.19 — 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.
“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 Padideh, and 2 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
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 needed Vouria Vafaei to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Gostaresh Foulad, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Milad Cheshmi trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Saeid Shojaei 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.
Shots: 8. 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Saeid Shojaei trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Marked 4.42, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
Squad28 Sep 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Kaveh Cheshmi'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.
“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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
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.
Marked 4.26. Nothing he attempted worked and by the hour mark he had stopped attempting much, which is the part a manager notices rather than the mistakes.
Saeid Shojaei 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.
Add another name to the list: Zamalek have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Kaveh Cheshmi. The answer from Padideh has not changed — yet.
5 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.
He has had enough of the noise. Whether Padideh can be a quieter place for him, or whether the only cure is a move somewhere the phone-ins are gentler, is a question for the next few months.