Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Saipa can pretend not to have heard.
Ariel Harush 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Seyed Mehdi Hosseini 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.
Something was said to Ariel Harush and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Hossein Khodadad after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mohammad Chaharmahali trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
Looking aheadSaipa take on the side everybody is chasing
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Abolfazl Zadehattar did not need any: 7.61, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Ali Dehghan 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 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.
Esteghlal Ahvaz held the lead for 4 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Saipa answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
It needed Abolfazl Zadehattar to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Esteghlal Ahvaz, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Hossein Khodadad after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saipa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
“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 Saipa, and it is not being withdrawn.
Ali Dehghan and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Dinamo Moscow have kept their man, and Saipa go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
He is 19 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.
48 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saipa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 9 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Saipa have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Abolfazl Zadehattar provided it, and the 8.43 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
“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 Saipa, and it is not being withdrawn.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Saipa have done the hard part with Al-Qadisiyah, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammad Karimi 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.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
56 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saipa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“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 Saipa, and it is not being withdrawn.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Abolfazl Zadehattar did not need any: 7.69, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
The deal with Maccabi Tel Aviv 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.
7 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Saba were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
72 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Saipa lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saipa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Mohammad Alinejad has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
94 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Saipa lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammad Karimi 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Al-Nassr have kept their man, and Saipa go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Mehdi Abdi and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Morteza Vafaei is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ahmad Torabi has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
118 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saipa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Hasan Pourhamidi was one of the reasons people came, and $620.0K does not replace that by itself.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Saipa have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The fee is $910.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Sepahan drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
The deal with Sepahan 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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Sepahan people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The offer from Malavan for Ali Khodadadi was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Sepahan had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Cerro Porteno, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Sepahan asked and Padideh said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The offer went to Esteghlal this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
24 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sepahan lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“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 Sepahan, and it is not being withdrawn.
Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ricardo Alves was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Shakhtar have kept their man, and Sepahan go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Mohammad Reza Bordbar and Sepahan agree another 4 years.
The dugout7 Jun 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Iván Sánchez'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.
The words a physio says slowly. 32 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.
Qualification is secured, and next season the big floodlit nights are continental ones. For the players it is a stage; for the accounts it is a lifeline; for the supporters it is passports.
He is 19, he is averaging 6.54, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. Sepahan will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
55 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sepahan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad10 May 2027
Words at Sepahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alexandr Maximenko 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 most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Sepahan will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sepahan know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Mohammad Reza Akhbari has written the date down.
63 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sepahan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh is on it.
96 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sepahan lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Arash Rezavand 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 Apr 2027
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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Hossein Hosseini trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
Loan watchThe goals keep arriving from Ashkan Alijani’s exile
130 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sepahan lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sepahan, another week without a signature from Hossein Hosseini.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Words at Sepahan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammad Karimi 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh is on it.
He went out to keep goal every week and came back with 1 games and 0 of them shut out. Somebody at Sepahan argued for this move last summer; nobody is arguing for it now.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sepahan know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Arash Rezavand and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
Sepahan asked and Malavan said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Sepahan pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Successful dribbles: 27. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Player ratings8 Feb 2027
Kasra Taheri, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.82
A mark of 7.82 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.89 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Esteghlal moved on, Mohammad Karimi reports back to Sepahan, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Padideh keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad8 Feb 2027
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.
Foolad will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Alireza Amirkhani has pre-agreed a move to Sepahan, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Sepahan have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The unbeaten run reaches 12. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
A brace, and Iván Sánchez takes the afternoon — 8.72
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Iván Sánchez provided it, and the 8.72 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The offer from Esteghlal for Aria Yousefi was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sepahan can pretend not to have heard.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 8 arrived, 3 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Sepahan had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Olimpia, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Zob Ahan the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Sepahan will enjoy reviewing.
“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.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
Kasra Taheri, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 7.94
A mark of 7.94 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.53 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Sepahan had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Racing Santander, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Amir Reza Jeddi has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
The words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
There were 88 minutes on the clock and Rah Ahan had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and Sepahan did not stop to explain themselves.
Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad30 Nov 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.
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.
“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 Sepahan, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.