According to the reporter of Mehr, few people thought that the Esteghlal football team would achieve a 6-1 victory against the fans in the 26th week of the Premier League. From the very first moments of the end of the match and in the virtual space, accusations started against the fan team with head coach Saket Elhami for lack of work and collusion against Esteghlal.
Some of the fans of other teams, including the Persepolis fans, after watching the game, believed that non-football events were the cause of this heavy defeat of the team.
The fire of these accusations was ignited by the release of a message from Sepehr Heidari, the former defender of Persepolis, who scored the championship goal of this team against Sepahan during the time of the head coach of Afshin Qutbi.
In this message, without mentioning Saket Elhami, Heydari claimed that he had manipulated his team in such a way that it would not win against Esteghlal. After that, the clipped videos of Mehdi Abdi’s performance against the players of Esteghlal were quickly circulated. In these videos, it seemed that Abdi was doing little to Esteghlal players.
Abdi took a stand against these accusations very soon and emphasized in numerous interviews with the media that none of the fans, including himself, were in a good mood against Esteghlal. He even swore he didn’t collude and lost his temper in Saturday’s game. “I have no problem,” he said. If the disciplinary and ethics committee wants me, I will be at their service with all my strength. “I would like to win Esteghlal in the elimination cup because of these events, and the conditions will definitely be different there.”
Except for Abdi, several players and coaches also defended their team’s performance, including Iman Alami, the assistant of Saket Elhami. Alami said: “We had the same defensive line against Persepolis and we played against them with the same formation, but in the conditions of games and training, the head coach makes changes. It doesn’t matter what the football audience recognizes, the important thing is that we We work with the players in training and measure their conditions and use them.”
Despite the rise of accusations, the inspired silence of the head coach of the fans has not yet reacted to this issue. The only inspirational statements after the heavy loss to Esteghlal were limited to the press conference after the match at Azadi Stadium.
Elhami, who was surprised by the result, called Saturday night as the most bitter and difficult night of his football life and only complained about the last move of the Esteghlali team, Seyed Hossein Hosseini’s penalty kick.