Marked for Mohammad Alinejad
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vahid Ebrahimi
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Malavan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.85, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad21 Sep 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 Malavan this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match19 Sep 2026
Foolad made Malavan work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
The terraces21 Sep 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.
Market21 Sep 2026
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Mohammad Alinejad has his answer from Malavan; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Too much change too quickly at Malavan
9 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.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Masoud Beiranvand could afford to be generous.
Squad21 Sep 2026
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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad14 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Vahid Ebrahimi
33 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Malavan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.69 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Malavan may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Market14 Sep 2026
Foolad come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Malavan did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Zafarbek Rahimjonov has just signed for Malavan, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Hossein Sadeghi 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 terraces14 Sep 2026
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Match12 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mojtaba Fakhrian. 2‑0 against Gostaresh Foulad, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Market14 Sep 2026
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Hossein Karimi has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match15 Aug 2026
Esteghlal Ahvaz will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Malavan were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The deal with Rah Ahan is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Ghaem Eslamikhah 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.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Foolad have kept their man, and Malavan go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Mojtaba Fakhrian was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.95. 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.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
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.
Market17 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Malavan have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
One of those days for Mehdi Abdi
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.64, and no argument anywhere in the ground.