Getting to Know the Iranian National Team: Alireza Jahanbakhsh

This article is part of a 22-part miniseries on the history and stars of Iranian football released ahead of Iran's participation in Group B of the 2022 Qatar World Cup in November. You can explore the rest of the series here.

Alireza Jahanbakhsh is one of the most well-known players on Iran's national football team today, and its second captain after Ehsan Hajsafi. Born on August 11, 1993 in a village in Rudbar county, Gilan province, he began playing football at an early age while working at his father’s bicycle workshop after school. In his early teens he moved to the city of Qazvin, and joined Damash Tehran football club – a full 100km away – at age 14.

A year later, Jahanbakhsh’s life changed with a phone call. Hossein Hanifi, the head coach of Damash Tehran, told him that he had introduced him as a “unique talent” in a conversation with Amir Abedini, the then-owner of Damash. “There’s a player in our team who travels from Qazvin to Tehran by bus every day to train,” he told him, Abedini had agreed to allocate the teenager a bed in the team's dormitory.

Jahanbakhsh played on Tuesdays for the Damash team, and on Fridays on the youth squad, attending two sessions a day with both teams for the remainder of the week. One day, his ankle was injured during play and he limped back to the youth training session. Hanifi, who saw him, raised his voice: “Get lost. Go back to where you came from.”

Shocked, Jahanbakhsh took another step forward. The coach’s voice grew louder: "Don't go any further. Go back through the same door you came from."

Jahanbakhsh had returned to the stands in tears, fearing he had lost both his dreams and the respect of his family. A few minutes later, though Hanifi came and sat next to him, and he was crying along with him. “You’re my life, son,” he said. “You’re my discovery. Did you think I’d let you go wherever you wanted?”

Three years later, when Jahanbakhsh was just 17, Amir Abedini took him to Damash Gilan, where he played for the first time in the Iran Pro League. That same year, he was invited onto the national youth team. He played for the team 17 times, scoring 11 goals, and not long afterward joined the national team.

In 2013, he went directly from Damascus to Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and with Team Melli earned a place at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. He came on as a substitute player in the match against Argentina and his famous dribble against Zabalata was broadcast many times on global news channels.

A year after the World Cup, Jahanbakhsh joined Alkmaar, a team in the top league of Dutch football. That year he was also named best player of the first half of the season. In April 2018, he would also become the first player of Asian origin to be named top goal scorer in a European league. With 12 assists, he ranked third among the top passers of the Eredivisie League season, and had a direct role in 33 of his team’s 72 goals along with the 21 goals he scored himself.

Jahanbakhsh went to Brighton, UK in 2018 and there began to experience a downturn. He walked onto the pitch 50 times with this team, and scored just twice. Simultaneously he has lost popularity among some fans: he has never commented on socio-political or economic issues in Iran, even where they pertain to football, but has backed many of the foreign policy stances of the Islamic Republic and promoted anti-Israel, anti-Jewish narratives. In 2021, he joined the Rotterdam-based Feyenoord FC and scored four goals in 28 games.