130 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Foolad 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 The request is on a desk at Foolad, and it is not being withdrawn.
Foolad and Esteghlal have settled on $2.3M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
$5.0M was the most the club would pay and Tractor were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.87 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Ali Nemati 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 Abolfazl Razzaghpour was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Foolad asked and ETO Győr said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad31 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and Foolad are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The words a physio says slowly. 138 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.
$8.0M was the most the club would pay and DAC Dunajska Streda were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
The clubs have shaken hands with Malavan; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.23 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The name of Sasan Ansari has come up in conversations Foolad were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
$1.8M on the table at Esteghlal. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Up for the corner, and Milad Sarlak delivers — 7.99
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Milad Sarlak scored, was marked 7.99, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The offer from Padideh for Alireza Amirkhani 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 146 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.
$7.5M on the table at DAC Dunajska Streda. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
$5.6M was the most the club would pay and Siah Jamegan were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.89 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The offer from Malavan for Abolfazl Zadehattar 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.
Foolad asked and Esteghlal said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Hamed Lak and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Foolad training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Abolfazl Razzaghpour 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 clubs have shaken hands with Padideh; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
$5.6M on the table at Siah Jamegan. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Tractor have kept their man, and Foolad go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $5.8M — a club that wants Sandro Negri enough to be asked twice.
Hamed Lak 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: Padideh have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Alireza Amirkhani. The answer from Foolad has not changed — yet.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Karim Pouraliganji 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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Mohammad Shojaei 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. Omid Mohammadi 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.
In brief
The dugoutSasan Ansari dropped after a run of poor form
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Amir Masoud Sarabadani provided it, and the 8.29 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Two goals and a mark of 8.21 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
13 seasons and 171 appearances, all of them here. Careers like this are not designed; they happen to a certain kind of man at a certain kind of club, and this town has one.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Yousef Mazrae did not need any: 7.97, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.