From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 Aug 2026
0‑3 to Rah Ahan, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Market17 Aug 2026
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.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Padideh wanted more than $7.9M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Sepahan asked and Tractor said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $176.2K — a club that wants Alireza Ramezani enough to be asked twice.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Sepahan have gone to Malavan with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Kaveh Rezaei in a row with a teammate
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.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Nobody left the Sepahan dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
“I could talk about decisions and I could talk about luck. I will not. We lost.” The manager, 0‑3, and a press conference that lasted four minutes.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match8 Aug 2026
4‑0, and the margin flattered nobody — it could have carried another goal or two without complaint. Afternoons like this are why people keep coming.
Squad10 Aug 2026
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Sepahan have gone to Padideh with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Sepahan have gone to Padideh with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
At 36 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 8.09, and nobody on the pitch better.
Market10 Aug 2026
Rah Ahan 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.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $211.5K — a club that wants Mohammad Hossein Sadeghi enough to be asked twice.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Omid Nourafkan commits to Sepahan for another 4 years.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Ricardo Alves and Sepahan agree another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Sepahan can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“146 caps was 146 more than the boy who started ever expected.” At 36 he has stepped away from the national side and has not stepped away from Sepahan.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Iván Sánchez wants to finish where he started
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and Sepahan now know that too.
Boardroom3 Aug 2026
2 academy players handed senior numbers at Sepahan
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Market3 Aug 2026
The name of Mohammad Reza Bordbar has come up in conversations Sepahan were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Market3 Aug 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Vahid Noorafkan 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Milad Rezaeian 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on Ricardo Alves's contract
24 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
In brief
-
Player ratings
Mohammad Mahdi Lotfi runs at them all day
-
The dugout
The view from the dugout
-
Boardroom
Sepahan turn down the training-ground plan