“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Tractor have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Tractor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Felipe Ávila 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.
7 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 90th minute. Esteghlal Ahvaz will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Two goals and a mark of 8.34 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 18-year-old it feels ownership of. Mohamed Meïté 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Tractor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammed Reza Azadi 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Esteghlal left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Tractor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Igor Postonjski 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.
Mohamed Meïté, 18, plays like he has been here for years — 7.67
A mark of 7.67 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 18-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Felipe Ávila 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.
“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 Tractor, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor 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.
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.
“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 Tractor, and it is not being withdrawn.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Saeid Karimazar scored, was marked 7.66, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
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.
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.
6 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
In brief
SquadA place in the month's best eleven for Takuya Ogiwara
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Tractor can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
“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 Tractor, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer from Aswan for Marko Johansson 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.
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.
20 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Tractor training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mohammed Reza Azadi 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
6 new faces, and Tractor 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 offer from Esteghlal Khuzestan for Mehdi Shiri 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 fee is $950.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. Esteghlal drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tractor this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The phone has started ringing about Seyed Mehdi Hosseini again, and this time the name on the line is Saipa. Tractor are listening politely and promising nothing.
8.57. 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.
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Amir Hossein Hosseinzadeh in the middle of it, and Malavan unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
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.
1 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 17 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Ali Rezaeian 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.
The phone has started ringing about Mani Sharifnejad again, and this time the name on the line is Naft Tehran. Tractor are listening politely and promising nothing.