{"id":35980,"date":"2019-04-06T12:30:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T19:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=35980"},"modified":"2019-04-06T13:04:52","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T20:04:52","slug":"alireza-jahanbakhsh-on-the-career-choice-which-has-carried-him-to-wembley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2019\/04\/06\/alireza-jahanbakhsh-on-the-career-choice-which-has-carried-him-to-wembley\/","title":{"rendered":"Alireza Jahanbakhsh on the career choice which has carried him to Wembley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Argus – LONDON, Alireza Jahanbakhsh could have his head under a bonnet.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead<\/g> he is heading to Wembley with\u00a0Albion. And a chance to make up for a series of cup<\/g> near misses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh became Albion’s record signing last summer when they bought him from AZ Alkmaar in Holland for \u00a317 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could have been very different for the two-time World Cup winger from Iran if his dad had got his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh told The Argus: “I always wanted to be involved with sport, but my father was always worried that if football doesn’t go well I had something else to secure my future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t want to say I didn’t like being a mechanic, I just wanted to use my hands, especially with cars and stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am not really into cars, but I wanted to learn something. When people talk about mechanics the mind goes on the car, but it can have different things, different jobs in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I studied for three years. From the second year I started my pro football too. It was very difficult to handle both at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Maybe it’s not good to say, but sometimes I had to run away from school to make sure I was on time for training. Sometimes I missed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When I just finished secondary school I didn’t continue studying, because my father was seeing it was really difficult for me (to do both).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I kept playing football. I tried to go to University in Holland, went for a short time then stopped again, because it was really difficult to handle both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’ve always been ambitious. I wanted to become something important, either for my parents, for people around me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am pretty sure if I had studied to be a mechanic I could have ended up somewhere good, but football was always something I lived for.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh was 19 when he moved to Dutch club NEC Nijmegen from Damash Gilan in Iran and played against Argentina in the 2014 World Cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He helped Nijmegen bounce straight back to the top flight after relegation and then rejected Albion’s initial interest when they were in the Championship to sign for Alkmaar. Jahanbakhsh, 25, said: “I lost in two cup finals in the last five years and two semi-finals. One time when I was playing at NEC we lost a semi-final and one time with Al Z and two times the final.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In Holland the team winning the cup qualify for the Europa League. In both years we didn’t make the Europa League, which was really important to play in for the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That gave us a little bit of extra pressure. We had a lot of young players. They couldn’t handle it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Both cup finals that I played in the young players you couldn’t even see them. I was talking to them during the game but they couldn’t even hear me – the pressure was a lot.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is not the case for Albion in their FA Cup semi-final at Wembley against hot favourites Manchester City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh helped them get there, featuring in the fourth round replay at West Brom, the fifth round against Derby (above) and the quarter-final comeback at Millwall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Here it’s different, no pressure,” he said. “You can enjoy it more and making it this far has already been something special for the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s been a long time (1983), so it’s something we can enjoy with the fans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If it was City or anybody else, just go there to Wembley and enjoy it. Obviously quality wise it could be different, but I think the most important thing is to go there and enjoy it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Argus – LONDON, Alireza Jahanbakhsh could have his head under a bonnet. Instead he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":35981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,93,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight","category-c13-team-melli-news"],"views":952,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35983,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35980\/revisions\/35983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}