Tag: AEK Athens

Smiles all across with Team Melli European competitions.

in the first round of this season’s UEFA club competitions, five out of six Iranian players were involved with their teams which all resulted in victories.

On Tuesday, Mehdi Taremi led his club Porto to a 3-1 win against Shakhter in Hamburg. Taremi scored one goal and was influential in another to start his campaign in a positive manner.

On the same night, Alireza Jahanbakhsh came in as a substitute and contributed a goal for his team Feyenoord in a 2-0 win against the Scottish champions Celtic.

Both the goals of Taremi and Jahanbakhsh were of high quality being praised by pundits.

On Thursday, AEK Athens with the presence of Team Melli Captain Ehsan Hajsafy who started the match, but was replaced by Milad Mohammadi, created the first shock of Europa League competition when they beat the south coast English Premier side Brighton 3-2 in a thrilling and eventful match.

In this match, Hajsafy was a major influencer as he gave away a penalty that Brighton scored, but then redeemed himself by providing an assist for the second AEK Athens goal. Hajsafy suffered a head injury and was replaced by Milad Mohammadi on the hour. Interestingly, when Mohammadi entered, the British TV commentator mentioned the AEK Players, nicknamed Milad “peep..peep” in reference to the speedy cartoon character “Road Runner”.

Due to the injury to Hajsafy in the second half, 14 extra minutes were added.

Sadegh Moharrami enjoyed the biggest win of the first round with Dinamo Zagreb after they defeated FC Astana 5-1 in Zagreb. Moharrami played the full 90 minutes and was one of the top-rated players of the match.

The surprise of the day, however, was the absence of Sardar Azmoun from the match sheet of AS Roma against FC Sherif. MOurinho’s team won that close match 2-1 away in Moldova with the winning goal coming from Lukaku.

The absence of Azmoun and Kristensen is due to restrictions imposed on AS Roma within the context of UEFA. For several years now, Roma has had to deal with the tight restrictions of the settlement agreement with UEFA over Financial Fair Play.

That includes the ‘transfer balance’ – so the current squad must be worth the same or less than last season’s group.

If that value is off balance, then the one way to get it back onto the right level is by leaving out new signings rather than those who were already part of the team.

Therefore, in order to make room for Lukaku, Roma has to leave out fellow new signings Azmoun and Kristensen.

So, it was a perfect week for Team Melli players with Taremi and Jahanbakhsh scoring while Hajsafy provided an assist.

Karim Ansarifard joins Omonia Nicosia in Cyprus

After a long dispute between AEK Athens and their Iranian forward, Karim Ansarifard finally settled for Omonia Nicosia in Cyprus. Ansarifard signed a two years contract yesterday with an option to extend for another year. Earlier on Tuesday, the Iranian center-forward was released by AEK, with the two sides deciding to end their partnership by mutual consent.

 Ansarifard departed to Cyprus while he had previously played for AEK Athens, Olympiakos, and Panionios in Greece.  The much-traveled player also played for Nottingham Forest (England), Osasuna (Spain), and Al Sailiya (Qatar)

 The Serbian head coach of AEK Athens, Vladan Milovic, who has a history of working with Ansarifard in AEK and Panionios, and has also coached the Cypriot Omonia team for a period, reacted to the transfer of the Iranian striker to Omonia and considered it a very positive event. Milovic said: “Karim is a footballer who is a team player and easily scores goals. He works for the team and is not one of those central strikers who only sees himself. in the field”
He added: “I worked with Ansarifard both in Panionios and AEK and we had good working relations. He is one of the best strikers I have coached.” Praising Ansarifard he stated: “He is a footballer with high experience and a lot of experience in big teams. Omonia was a very good choice. Karim will help a lot. He is an experienced footballer in his prime. With Karim on the field, the coach can play with all systems. He is a very smart kid.”
In the end, Milovic said: “Karim is a complete professional player. He is at the service of the team and always gives his life for the team both in training and in the game.”

Matias Almeida AEK current coach did not have him in his plans and decided to end the collaboration with him. Ansarifard had another year left on his contract with AEK and initially refused to leave.

Ansarifard played two seasons with AEK Athens playing  63 matches and scoring 17 goals, thirteen of which came in the first season 2021/22.

Omonia Nicosia is the most popular team in the island nation and has a passionate set of fans. Omonia is involved in UEFA Europa League this season and plays in a tough Group alongside Manchester United, Real Sociedad, and FC Sherief. Omonia will be hosting Manchester United in Nicosia on Oct, 6th.

Ansarifard struggles with AEK demanding his departure from club.

Karim Ansarifard, the Iranian striker of the Greek side,  AEK Athens, has created a situation that is leading to a confrontation with the Club. The Team Melli Captain has been placed on the surplus list of the Greek club, even though he has a contract with this team for one more season. Ansarifard has been on the surplus list since before the end of last season but has not yet chosen a new team.

Ansarifard would earn nearly half a million Euro according to his contract with AEK Athen, however, the club is unwilling to pay such a sum to a player who is out of favor and a benchwarmer. This issue has caused the surprise of the Greek media in addition to the anger of the AEK club. The betcosmos site stated that Karim Ansarifard is the hardest case of the players on the black list of AEK, and wrote: “AEK wants to get rid of the payment of half a million euros in the last year of Ansarifard’s contract. Since the beginning of the summer, this Iranian striker has been notified to find a team, but no progress has been made so far. What is surprising is the attitude of Ansarifard himself. We are in the year of the  FIFA World Cup and finding a team is the only hope of this striker to be in the national team of his country, but he is not entertaining any offers that come from inside and outside Greece.”

 

The article in this media adds: “Reports in Iran indicate that Persepolis made continuous offers to him, but his answer was always ben negative. It seems that he is not interested in playing in Iran. This Iranian striker attracted the interest of two clubs in Lamia and OFI, but it seems that Lamia got tired of waiting for him and strengthened their attack line with the purchase of Richmond Boaki. Staying in Athens seems to be the absolute priority of  Ansarifard. Here an important question arises for AEK. Will the club continue to pay a player exorbitant money to sit on the bench, or will they find another solution? Several Media outlets such as sportdog and sportime that have published this news claimed that AEK club is angry with their Iranian attacker’s attitude!

Ansarifard is married to a Greek lady and wants to remain in the Capital City.  A  big question mark is in front of Ansarifard in regards to his career in Team Melli. He has been a fringe player that makes cameo one or two appearances at the end of each game. He is way down the pecking in the forward line that is dominated by Azmoun and Taremi, as top picks. Players like Sayyadmanesh, Ghaedi,  Hosseinzadeh, and Alipour also make a strong case for inclusion in the Team Melli squad. However, it is not only his playing standard that has suffered as Ansarifard is one of those who started the rebellion against Dragan Skocic. His chances of making the 26 players’ squad for the FIFA World Cup are quite slim.

 

Taremi & Azmoun see red in their clubs league matches!

Sardar Azmoun, like Mehdi Taremi, was red-carded and dismissed in the match played today.  in the tenth round of the Russian Premier League Zenit hosted Sochi in St, Petersburg and went ahead through a goal scored by Artem Dzyuba on the stroke of halftime. Three minutes earlier Sardar Azmoun was given his marching order after a VAR review of the incident by the referee. Azmoun was involved in a fifty Fifty ball with Sochi keeper but his foot hit the keeper’s midriff. Initially, the referee branded a yellow card, but on video review, he changed the color to red. Zenit went on to suffer its first defeat of the season 1-2.

 

Yesterday (Saturday) in Portugal, Mehdi Taremi was also given his marching order after a second yellow card was awarded for diving in the penalty box. That second yellow meant a red card and dismissal from the match. Porto however, went on to win the match 2-1.

Although Sardar Azmoun’s straight red card was more than harsh as he had the full right to go for the ball, unfortunately, he collided with the keeper with his foot high enough to be rendered a dangerous play. Taremi’s red card was typical misconduct by the player who is accumulating yellow and red cards at an alarming level in Europe. Taremi has received 6 yellow cards so far and so early in the season with club and country and now a red card!

 

The timing of the two red cards for arguably the best two players in Team Melli does not augur well with a crucial World Cup double starting in 4 days time, first against the UAE and then in Azadi against South Korea.

However, it was not all bad news for the Legionnaires in Europe as AEK Athen featuring three Team Melli players managed to win 3-1 away to Panetolokos to keep pace with the top of the table in Greece top division. Millad Mohammadi made his debut for AEK Athens after his transfer and played the full 90 minutes. Ansarifard and Hajsafy both were brought in with 15 minutes to go.

Iran will play UAE in Al Zabeel Stadium in Dubai at 20:45 local time (20:15 Iran Time)

Milad Mohammadi signs for AEK Athens

The Team Melli left-back, who has been in Athens since Wednesday, successfully completed the medical and ergometric examinations on Thursday, and after the completion of formalities, he headed to AEK Headquarters and signed his contract with the club.

Milad Mohammadi leaves Gent and knockeing on AEK Athens doors.

Milad Mohammadi, the left-back of Team Melli, who was playing for the  Belgian team  Gent, unexpectedly terminated his contract with the club and is currently a free agent without a team.

According to Greek media, Mohammadi has reached an agreement with AEK Athens and is on the verge of joining the team. Greece’s “sdna” website reported that Mohammadi had even been issued a plane ticket to travel to Greece for medicals and that the player would travel to Athens today to sign a contract and finalize the details of his transfer. According to this site, a few months ago, during the summer transfers window, AEK offered Gent a net amount of 700,000 Euros for the transfer of Milad Mohammadi in addition to some significant rewards for the Belgian club, but the player’s agent claimed that he had more suitors and believed Mohammadi will have better offers before the transfer windows close. This, whoever, did not materialize. Gent pressured Mohammadi to extend his contract, which expires in 2022, but the player refused and the Belgian club recruited another player.

Eventually, Gant and Mohammadi mutually agreed to terminate the contract. It was after that that the president of AEK Athens started his efforts to attract Mohammadi and this transfer is on the verge of being finalized. SDNA predicted that with the presence of Milad Mohammadi on the left side of the AEK defense, Ehsan Haj Safi’s position will change and the captain of the Iranian national team, being such a versatile player will occupy other posts. Karim Ansarifard is another Iranian player of the AEK team who can help Mohammadi familiarize and incorporate into this team sooner and faster.

Official: Ehsan Hajsafi signs with AEK Athens.

Team Melli Captain Ehsan Hajsafy joined the Greek club AEK Athens. HajSafi who traveled to Athens after finishing his season with Sepahan in the 20th edition of the Persian Gulf League, officially signed a contract with the Greek side this evening. The contract of the captain of the Iranian national team with this club is until the end of the summer of 2023.

Hajsafi will be joining Karim Ansarifard in AEK Athens.

Hajsafi (31 years) previously played for Panionios in the 2017–2018 season and played 14 matches scoring 1 goal before moving briefly to 2018 Olympiacos where he played 6 times and scored 1 goal. AEK is one of the three most successful teams in Greek football (including Olympiacos and Panathinaikos), winning 30 national titles. The team is coached by the Serbian Vladan Milojević.

Hajsafi has played 113 games for Team Melli since his debut against Zambia in a friendly in May 2008. He scored 6 goals for Team Melli.

Karim Ansarifard joins AEK Athens

Team Melli forward Karim Ansarifard has joined Greek side AEK Athens on a three-year deal, the Tehran Times reported on Wednesday. 

The 30-year-old had penned a three-year contract with Al Sailiya last year but parted company with the Qatari club by mutual consent.

The former Nottingham Forest striker previously played for Greek clubs Panionios and Olympiacos from 2015 to 2018.

He represented Iran at the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and 2018.

Ansarifard whose international career started with Osasuna in 2014/15 season, played in the 79 matches Greek league and score 32 goals, initially for Panionios for two seasons and then to Olympiakos Piraeus for two seasons as well. He then moved to Nottingham Forest in 2018.