Arash Afshin is desperately looking for an escape route out of Sepahan club after sitting on the bench in many matches. The 25 years old Team Melli player, has not featured regularly for Sepahan after his transfer from Foolad Khuzestan at the beginning of the season. Afshin’s name was also absent from the list of Team Melli recently announced by Queiroz.

It is rumored that Afshin is seeking the help of another Iranian player and some agents to find him a club in Qatar. So far those efforts have not yielded any results as it seems that Afshin has to fight it out in Sepahan to secure a starting role in the forward line, presently occupied by Mohammad Gholami.

Arash Afshin , a promising young player in his own right, represented Team Melli at different age levels and was selected for the AFC Asian Cup 2011 by Afshin Ghotbi. The Foolad player was showing a lot of promise with his club, and when given a chance in the Asian Cup, he took it well and scored a goal while continuing to impress. However , with the end of the Ghotbi era , and the return of Afshin to league football, his form started to suffer and his problems started to grow.

Like almost all young Iranian players at this stage of their career when they shoot to fame in a short period of time, he developed an attitude. So early in his career, he started to think that he must be the first choice to start in all Foolad matches. On few occasions, he displayed his displeasure for being substituted. Although , the coach and the club tolerated him fo a while , he was eventually disciplined and fined by the club for his misbehavior and lack of discipline. But very true to the usual Iranian style of doing things, he was soon pardoned shortly after he was disciplined! His fine would be waived and everything would return to normal!  Except , it did not. His lack of discipline continued and it was even more evident in training where he did not give his best and certainly looked lethargic to his coach, unwilling to run, or do physical exercises.

The supposed transfer to the French league with Lille never materialized. When Sepahan came calling for Arash Afshin, both the club and the mild mannered coach Hossein Faraki, who had just had about enough of the troublemaker, agreed to sell. Afshin was a source of disturbance to Faraki’s finely balanced team, and since Afshin left, the problems decreased and the club concentrated on playing football. They are currently at the top of the league table.

While Sepahan was never short of players in every line, Afshin had to prove himself worthy of taking the place of the likes of Gholami , Dalovic , Sukaj and the promising youngster Ali Choopani. The first three players were quite established and in the top of the picking order. However, Afshin continued his way of being lazy and short of commitment in Sepahan. The difference though was one Croat in the shape of Zlatko Kranjcar , a no-nonsense man who would not hesitate one bit to bench a player of much greater stature and fame than Afshin, if he found the player is not working hard enough. While Afshin was argumentative and even shouted against Faraki, the Croat coach of Sepahan has no time for such antics, insisting that players need to show their worth in training and whenever given playing time in a match to claim for a regular place in the starting line-up. Clearly , Afshin has failed to do so, and as seen last week , his cry baby antics and leaving the match in disgust , did not go down very well with Sepahan , who are surely thinking of offloading him at the right opportunity.

Afshin, is a typical breed of Iranian young players who believe they are way better than what they actually are. The type of player that want to do the minimum but earn the maximum. The record books are full of such young players with good potentials who never made the grade because of their attitude.

If Arash Afshin is not careful and not willing to work hard, he will go into oblivion the way many has done not long time ago in Iran’s football. Unfortunately, players attitude and mentality, has never been properly addressed in Iran’s football. Only the minority of Iranian coaches have the right tools to deal with offenders. Such mentality and poor discipline, is not exclusive to young players either, which makes the job of foreign coaches like Queiroz and Kranjcar , so much difficult.