{"id":38333,"date":"2020-01-03T19:30:22","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T03:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=38333"},"modified":"2020-01-03T19:30:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T03:30:54","slug":"i-lost-myself-for-a-while-brighton-forward-alireza-jahanbakhsh-happy-to-have-career-finally-back-on-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/01\/03\/i-lost-myself-for-a-while-brighton-forward-alireza-jahanbakhsh-happy-to-have-career-finally-back-on-track\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I lost myself for a while’: Brighton forward Alireza Jahanbakhsh happy to have career finally back on track"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Telegraph – LONDON, On a weekend when mental health is the focus of the FA Cup, Brighton\u2019s Alireza Jahanbakhsh hopes not to be quite so happy if he scores for a third time in a week against Sheffield Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh is the Iranian forward signed for a then club record fee of \u00a317 million who had to wait 27 games and 18 months for his first goal, despite being the Dutch league\u2019s leading scorer in 2017-18 with 21. Only now can we see the distress the long wait caused him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday\u00a0he broke his duck against Bournemouth. Five days later he struck with\u00a0an equalising bicycle kick against Chelsea that evoked the spirit of Wayne Rooney\u2019s classic overhead goal\u00a0against Manchester City. Both times,\u00a0Jahanbakhsh was overwhelmed by emotion\u00a0and the goodwill of his team-mates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he no longer wants to be the surprise scorer who everyone used to pity. \u201cI hope, I can\u2019t promise, but I hope it won\u2019t happen again, to get such emotion,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clutching his face and seemingly tearful after both goals, Jahanbakhsh, 26, was exiting a dark phase in which, he says: \u201cI lost myself for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back home in Iran, where he lived and played until joining NEC in Holland in 2013, he was expected to carry the nation\u2019s flag in the Premier League. When he faded from view in Chris Hughton\u2019s final season in charge, the disappointment of a country was added to personal anguish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe people around me have always been really positive, saying just be patient, you\u2019ll get your chance, you will be as good as you want,\u201d he said at Brighton\u2019s training ground. \u201cThere was a lot of negative stuff out there. Back home people weren\u2019t that happy to be honest, because people wanted me to play and football is really big back home. Now I see the same people are coming with different [more positive] comments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jahanbakhsh has reduced the risk of Brighton offloading him; and his manager, Graham Potter, acknowledges the mental strain on a player who had to keep telling himself: \u201cThere is a reason that you\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potter says: \u201cIt must be hard. We were just talking about mental health [the joint FA Cup initiative between Heads Up and Public Health England] \u2013<\/strong> and it must be hard to come [to England] with the pressure and the expectation of being something, and then it doesn\u2019t quite happen for you. You\u2019ve got the personal disappointment. You feel you\u2019re letting people down. To stay and have the clarity of who you are as a player and a person must be difficult. It\u2019s a testimony to him that he\u2019s come through that period really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think he came for a lot of money. There\u2019s a bit of pressure that comes with that. Then there\u2019s how he plays \u2013 <\/strong>playing one way in Holland and then being asked to play a completely different way when he comes to the UK. You\u2019ve also got the fact that the league is a higher league, a better league.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe got a player that was a bit low in confidence. It hadn\u2019t quite happened for him, he\u2019d probably lost a bit of trust [from] the players and supporters, because he\u2019d had a year when he\u2019d disappointed. When you\u2019re in that situation you\u2019re probably trying too hard, you\u2019re trying to score or assist. You\u2019re just trying to affect the game \u2013<\/strong> to contribute  \u2013<\/strong> which is understandable. Sometimes that means you give the ball away, you don\u2019t make the right decision, or you expose your team to transition. I think he\u2019s just really improved, knuckled down, focused on keeping things simple \u2013<\/strong> and he\u2019s getting his rewards because he does have his quality and he can affect the goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just think it\u2019s been a bit of a long process for him. In a way it\u2019s a great story, to keep persisting, because in the modern game everyone thinks, if it\u2019s not happening we need to find a solution quick and move on to the next one, but he hasn\u2019t done that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A disciple of the Brazilian Ronaldo, who he watched \u201cevery day\u201d in his youth, Jahanbakhsh venerated the Rooney bicycle kick before he tried it himself. \u201cThe goal of Rooney I have looked at a thousand times. It was decent goal. The style was quite the same, but a different angle and different shape. At the moment I was thinking \u2013<\/strong> hit it as hard as you can, but the ball was behind me and a bicycle kick was the only option.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 It was a sweet way for a \u201clost\u201d player to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph – LONDON, On a weekend when mental health is the focus of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":38334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,89,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c16-iranian-legionairs","category-c22-players-spotlight"],"views":1181,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333","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=38333"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38336,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38333\/revisions\/38336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}