Marked for Ehsan Hajsafi
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match10 Oct 2026
4 matches without a win for Sepahan
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Sepahan are no longer polite ones.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Mattheus Oliveira 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 terraces12 Oct 2026
At 20 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.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad12 Oct 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.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Marked 7.53. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Oct 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 Sepahan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Sepahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Alves 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.
Loan watch5 Oct 2026
“I did not go to Gostaresh Foulad to sit and watch. I want to come back to Sepahan and fight for my place.” 0 appearances in 5 matches say the rest.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Mohammad Mehdi Mohebi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.32. 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Aria Yousefi gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Too much change too quickly at Sepahan
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Match3 Oct 2026
It needed Mohammad Mehdi Mohebi to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Saba, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Market5 Oct 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 5.76, and generously at that. Nothing came off, and by the end the crowd had stopped expecting it to.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad28 Sep 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Sepahan may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Mohammad Reza Akhbari 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Ricardo Alves 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.
Match26 Sep 2026
A bad afternoon for Sepahan against Malavan
1‑2 to Malavan, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad28 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Ricardo Alves, and the manager let it.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.13, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market24 Aug 2026
Esteghlal come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Sepahan did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market24 Aug 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market24 Aug 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Sepahan is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad24 Aug 2026
The medical room confirms 34 days on the sidelines for Ashkan Alijani, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad24 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 Sepahan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 Aug 2026
34 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Sepahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ricardo Alves 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.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match22 Aug 2026
Persepolis left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.