{"id":54591,"date":"2026-02-22T15:25:03","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=54591"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:25:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:25:03","slug":"sohrab-bakhtiarizadeh-named-esteghlal-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2026\/02\/22\/sohrab-bakhtiarizadeh-named-esteghlal-head-coach\/","title":{"rendered":"Sohrab Bakhtiarizadeh named Esteghlal head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>Sohrab Bakhtiarizadeh, who had previously served twice as head coach of Esteghlal football club, has been appointed as the team\u2019s new head coach until the end of the season.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bakhtiarizadeh replaces Ricardo S\u00e1 Pinto at the Tehran-based club.<\/p>\n<p>After Esteghlal officials decided to part ways with S\u00e1 Pinto, the club\u2019s technical committee met with board members to review potential candidates for the head coaching position.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the club\u2019s decision, Esteghlal assistant Voria Ghafouri will lead the team in Sunday\u2019s match against Mes Rafsanjan.<\/p>\n<p>Bakhtiarizadeh, who represented Iran at the 2006 FIFA World Cup and scored in the match against Angola, also served in two separate spells as Esteghlal\u2019s head coach last season. This marks the third time in the past two years that he has taken technical responsibility for the team.<\/p>\n<p>The new head coach traveled to Rafsanjan on Sunday morning along with Ali Tajernia, the club\u2019s acting CEO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, Sohrab Bakhtiarizadeh, who had previously served twice as head coach of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":54592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,84,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-esteghlal","category-c47-featured-news","category-persian-gulf-pro-league"],"views":511,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54591","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=54591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54593,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54591\/revisions\/54593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}