Marked for Mohammad Daneshgar
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad5 May 2031
A fracture rules Diego Arroyo out for 91 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Sepahan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market5 May 2031
“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.
Market5 May 2031
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mohammad Daneshgar will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sepahan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad5 May 2031
Mohammad Reza Bordbar 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.
Squad5 May 2031
Abel Bustos 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.
Squad5 May 2031
A last season at home is what Matías García is after
It is sentimental, it is completely genuine, and it is the beginning of a departure nobody has announced. The club can be gracious about it or it can pretend not to have heard.
In brief
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Boardroom
$2.0M on the table at Sepahan
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Boardroom
The Sepahan board put their names to it
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market7 Apr 2031
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sepahan they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad7 Apr 2031
“The easiest signature of my career.” Iván Sánchez and Sepahan agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad7 Apr 2031
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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market10 Mar 2031
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sepahan they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad10 Mar 2031
Mohammad Reza Bordbar 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.
Market10 Mar 2031
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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market10 Feb 2031
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mohammad Daneshgar will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sepahan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Market10 Feb 2031
Reza Vafaei wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Sepahan hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Boardroom10 Feb 2031
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Mohammad Daneshgar has agreed terms with Tractor for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad10 Feb 2031
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.
Squad10 Feb 2031
“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.
The terraces10 Feb 2031
The crowd has taken to Ramin Azizi
At 23 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 ratings10 Feb 2031
Ninety minutes of Mehdi Ebrahimi at his very best
Marked 8.71. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Sepahan.
Player ratings10 Feb 2031
Ninety minutes of Reza Vafaei at his very best
Marked 8.34. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Sepahan.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad26 Aug 2030
The words a physio says slowly. 65 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.
Squad26 Aug 2030
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 21 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad26 Aug 2030
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.
Player ratings26 Aug 2030
Age has not caught Iván Sánchez yet — 8.25
At 37 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.25 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market26 Aug 2030
“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.
Squad26 Aug 2030
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.
Match24 Aug 2030
It finished 2‑1, and it was Mehdi Limouchi’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Sepahan.
The terraces26 Aug 2030
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Amir Mehdi Maghsoudi has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings26 Aug 2030
Mehdi Limouchi was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.45. 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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad4 Mar 2030
Majid Aliyari breaks a bone — 34 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 34 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market4 Mar 2030
Only the photograph left for Abbas Habibi
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Abbas Habibi will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sepahan the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad4 Mar 2030
Mohammad Reza Bordbar 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.
Squad4 Mar 2030
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.
Squad4 Mar 2030
“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.
Loan watch4 Mar 2030
“I watch every Sepahan game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Malavan runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match28 Nov 2029
The small margins put Sepahan out
Out, 0‑0 to Gostaresh Foulad, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Squad3 Dec 2029
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Amir Mehdi Maghsoudi: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Squad3 Dec 2029
Jonás Miszczuk 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.
Squad3 Dec 2029
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.
Squad3 Dec 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Iván Sánchez, and the manager let it.
Player ratings3 Dec 2029
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings3 Dec 2029
Twelve yards, a goalkeeper guessing, and it still did not go in. He will take the next one, and every soul in the ground will hold their breath.
Match1 Dec 2029
A 2‑2 draw with Rah Ahan leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Loan watch3 Dec 2029
16 appearances away from home and 6 goals to show for them. Every one of them makes next summer's conversation a little more expensive.