Mahan Baghdadi, sad story

[Shantaram]

https://www.aftonbladet.se/sportblad...ch-75-piskrapp

[KC McElroy]

Oh no!!!

[Los Tehranos]

chi neveshte ?

[Foolad Khuzestan]

do u want ro fool us by posting a swedish article ?

[sedee91]

do u want ro fool us by posting a swedish article ?

Maybe he should post an Iranian one because they always fool me.

[Team Melli Fan]

https://www.aftonbladet.se/sportblad...ch-75-piskrapp

Mahan Bahgdadi was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 75 lashes
Football unusual story - from their dreams club to the Iranian desert with a machine gun in hand

He left Sweden for a unique chance to take a shortcut in the top football.
Just over a year later, he stood out in the desert of the Islamic Republic of Iran's uniform, with a machine gun in his hands.
Mahan Baghdadi chased the dream so far that he eventually needed to risk the life of flying from it.

At a restaurant in Frihamnen in Stockholm is a young man with a story. It's so fresh and so unlikely he's hard to sort it.

Where should he start? Where did everything start?

Actually, it was well between 2013 and 2014. Mahan Baghdadi was a talented and goalie-like 18-year-old Swedish Iranians who played in junior's Swedish with Vasalund. One day he saw a sort of job advertisement signed by Iranian football legend Mehdi Mahdavikia.

He called for players to the U19 national team, guys who lived in other countries but had roots in Iran .

Mahan Baghdadi sent his resume and his videos, and received answers faster than he had ever imagined. The Iranian U19 national team would play the Granatkin Cup in Russia, and he was welcome to join the squad.

"They did not know anything about me, but I still got to play. I arrived, practiced in the evening and then I was allowed to jump into Belarus the following day. After two minutes I did a goal, and then everything exploded.

It was such a goal that created both dreams and opportunities. Mahan Baghdadi appeared in the Navad television program, an Iranian equivalent to "Football Night" with about 30 million viewers.

- The programmer showed the clip on me and told me: "Now Iran has its first international player in the U19 national team."

Two days later, Mahan Baghdadi played his second international match for Iran, against Finland. He scored again, and now the sky could not hold him back.

15 years had passed since he arrived in Stockholm, but part of Mahan Baghdadi had always been in the country in which he was born.

His club was not AIK or Hammarby. His club was Esteghlal, the huge aristocrat club from Tehran, who has been the Asian champion several times and played the derbyn in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators as long as the national arena held them.

- On my Facebook page I had pictures of myself in Esteghlal clothes, and when the Iranians found it, there was no way back. It was not like this: "Would you like to come here sometime in the future?", But there were thousands of Persian messages, just: "You 're coming here, you're going to play for Esteghlal."

At home in Stockholm, the teens ended without Mahan Baghdadi getting that real lift up in the senior football. He switched Vasalund to great-looking AFC, but it was a bit of damage and a bit strange with the contract and a growing feeling that he should really be somewhere else.

For more than a year, Mahan Baghdadi had a kind of continuous contact with Esteghlal, and in the summer of 2015 he had the opportunity to go down and train with the a team.

"It was one of the best Esteghlal teams ever. They won the league in 2013, played quarterfinals in the Asian Champions League. It was Javad Nekounam, who made the most international matches ever for Iran. Andranik Teymourian, who played in the Premier League. Engelsmannen Jlloyd Samuel. Farhad Majidi, one of the greatest Esteghlal icons. I trained with them for two weeks, and it was kind of 7,000 spectators every time.

That time, it was mostly a test run, but during the winter break and the 2016 transfer window, Esteghlal heard about it.

Now there was a place available in the squad, and a contract in the pot.

So Mahan Baghdadi released everything, left Stockholm and booked a single ticket to Iran to chase his dream. It was close now, it was actually within easy reach.

"In Sweden, I sat with Johan Mjällby, who tried to attract me to Västerås. We talked, but I was not even interested. I just thought about Esteghlal, let go of everything else. Vasteras? What should I do in Västerås? Mjällby talked about the fact that their fans were cool, but I only: "If you knew where to go".

Was there no part of you who felt it was too good to be true?

"In many parts of the world, it would have been, but I knew that in Iran it could actually be possible. There may be a completely random guy who paid money for his chance, and suddenly he does six matches in the a team. There may be someone who made ten goals in the junior team, and then he gets five starts. I had nevertheless made any goals in junior country matches, and with those merits I was quite confident that I would at least play in the Iranian High Court. Hopefully Esteghlal, but otherwise any other club. But honestly ... It did not matter how much the brain said. I was just thinking with my heart.

Perhaps expectations were unrealistic, yet they were surpassed in Iran. For a while, Mahan Baghdadi trained with Esteghlal's a-troupe, and during that time he felt himself rewritten and insulted in Tehran.

He tells of a life that borders on the playboys existence. Model job for various magazines, hanging out among the television profiles and actors, the pool party at home with football legend Ali Karimi who drew robbery stories over the years in Bayern Munich.

"It's easy to say I should keep my head cold, but it's easy to say afterwards. When you walk on the street there and everyone recognizes you, everyone knows who you are, you do not have to queue at the store, you do not have to pay at the restaurant ... It's awesome. After training with Esteghlal for a month, I had 80,000 followers at Instagram. If I had written it would have been 650,000.

Life in Iran is different from life in Sweden, and Baghdadi has a fierce reminder that should have served as a warning clock. One day he walked along the street with a forbidden bottle of whiskey hidden in a bag. The custody police stopped him and discovered the bottle.

Mahan Baghdadi was arrested for a day before being sentenced to 6 months in prison and 75 whiskers.

"But everything in Iran is about who you know and how much money you have. I have a cousin who is a famous lawyer, and he managed to transform the sentence to a fine. And we could solve everything without getting into the media or reaching Esteghlal or so.

Throughout the time, Mahan Baghdadi felt that he was approaching the dream of an a-contract with. In total, he made 60-70 workouts with the first team, played with them in a training match for almost 15,000 spectators.

"Finally, I was notified by Vice President Seyed Pendar Toufighi. "Tomorrow, you come to my office and write a contract," he said. I even got a time for the meeting, woke up that day and thought it was the day I officially became the Esteghlal player. But instead, the nightmare began.

When Mahan Baghdadi was to sign his contract, the situation had changed completely. Esteghlal had succeeded in agreeing with former Köln and Fulham player Adil Chihi, and now there was no longer a free kick in the squad.

Instead, there were now plenty of obstacles where no obstacles had previously existed.

A few weeks ago, the whole football world became acquainted with the South Korean military force, where the great star, Heung-Min Son, eventually had to win the Asian championships in order not to opt for military service.

The Iranian system is similar, but in practice more flexible.

The wealthy and the powerful always find a loophole and a resort, and had a rich and powerful community institution that Esteghlal really liked had been able to exploit Mahan Baghdadi's Swedish passport to discard him.

But with full a-troop they were no longer interested in such a solution. Instead, they suddenly declared that there were no exceptions within the reach of Baghdadi, that he also had to do the same two-year military service as all other sports people with Persian passports.

"But it was still like this:" We will keep an eye on you, we will help you. All you have to do is play two seasons for one of the military clubs. See it as a lending to help get ready for Esteghlal. " So I just: "Okay, I do it".

"A total nightmare - I cried every night"
In Iran there is the Air Force Club, the Navy Club and the Revolutionary Club. Mahan Baghdadi wanted to stay in Tehran and came to the team's club: Niroye Zamini.

The club had just moved down from second to third, the standard was acceptable.

The existence was not what he imagined, but still reasonably okay.

Then came the message that changed everything. In a period that was not exactly specified - a month? three months? one year? He would not play football. Instead, he would attack an army base for regular military training.

He was going to wear the uniform of the Islamic Republic of Iran and go out in the field.

"And now it did not matter who I was talking about, what I was trying to do. I had come to Iran to play football, I had agreed to play for a military club as part of my football career, they promised me I would not even have to wear uniform. But now: "There are absolutely no exceptions anymore, everyone has to do it. The United States and Israel have threatened us ".

The Iranian army is mythical, powerful, feared. Now, Mahan Baghdadi was forced to shave off both hair and beard and become part of it on real.

"It was terrible, worse than I could imagine. It's sad to talk about it. The first week was a total nightmare. I cried every night.

If not, Mahan Baghdadi did start to get a little slowdown, because there were football people who knew who he was? Rather the opposite

"Our officer had four stars - the highest possible rank - and unlucky enough he was at Persepolis and knew who I was. The first week he put me on guard every night. Then you watch from twelve to five in the morning while everyone else is asleep. If you fall asleep in the watch tower then you'll be in prison. So five nights in a row I did not sleep.

The 23-year-old has lived in Sweden since he was 4. He has spent much of his life in Lidingö, and it is clear when he speaks, expresses and pronounces the letter "in".

For football people, he sounds like a little sleepier Martin Åslund.

"In recent years, I have lived in Täby, and it's enough for me to go to the Rinkeby way, so I do not feel home anymore. And there, it is still superduperlyx compared to this.

In the army dormitory, 175 people gathered about their bunk beds. The sweaty clothes were washed in the toilet sink.

- At nine o'clock in the morning the light was turned off, at four o'clock in the morning, they woke us up to go to the mosque and pray for the first time that day. And I can not pray, I had no idea. I just knelt down and pretended to escape a month's Koran school.

At best, Baghdadi and the others got home one night a week, take a proper shower and use their smartphones. Once back on the base, both the TV and the telephone ban had to be met.

- The food was, of course, sad, the water just tasted salty. I went down seven, eight kilos during that time. During the days we went to group and marched. Up with foot and down with foot and so on ... All in sick heat, 40-45 degrees. When they wanted to punish us, they forced us to run around the entire plant in our heavy military boots.

But they never punished with violence?

"I was never exposed to it, but many others got a kiss in my stomach or so. A guy in the group was kind of the illiterate, so he answered 0 of 20 on any test we had. He got some really nice bangs.

At one point the group was far into the desert, and for three, four days, the training camp intensified. The weapons appeared, the shooting ability was tested and developed.

- It was sickly scary, felt like an unreal film. The stairs just went downhill, everything just got worse and worse. There I stood beside my military field in the desert, completely black in my face, with the Iranian uniform on me and a machine gun in my hands. And I could only think: "What is this? I thought I would be a football star. How did I get here? ".

In total, Mahan Baghdadi remained in the military camp for 70 days, and when he was released, the nightmare was not over for it.

He moved to a smaller association that played in Tehran's regional games, and still had to appear on the army base on a regular basis to serve in the watch tower.

"The thought just grew in my head:" This does not go anymore ". The football I played was the same level as St Erikscup, and so I had to continue to go to this base and stand in the watch tower with weapons. Esteghlal was totally in my mind, did not even answer my conversations anymore. Actually, I only had six months left in the military, but it felt like six years. It was not just that I was about to lose my football, but my life was destroying. I did not feel safe. There was shooting around the military bases almost every night. I just knew ... There I stand up in the watch tower - a shot I'm gone. Iran is so worried now, it can be war at any time. Tomorrow the civil war can be started.

You were more afraid of it than being sent to Syria suddenly?

"It would have been even worse. If so, I would have had to go in and shoot my own people.

Sometimes, Mahan Baghdadi thought about joining the Swedish embassy, but he did not think they could do anything for him, but instead the problems would only increase even when he came out.

In his mind, there was only one thing to do. He would desert from one of the world's most powerful war machines.

On June 25, Iran played against Portugal in the World Cup. Several of the players were the ones who had been with Mahan Baghdadi at the first U19 camp in Russia; attack star Sardar Azmoun, ballist Saeid Ezatolahi, space mate Majid Hosseini.

Now they played a draw against Cristiano Ronaldo and the other European champions in front of the world's eyes.

Mahan Baghdadi fled for his life.

- I decided, skipped the fence around the military base. He who was on guard there was my friend, a football player. In Iran there are taxis everywhere, so I jumped into the first car and went to a place that was not my home address. It was not a direct request - I could still go to Tehran's streets - but if I did not return, I knew they would come after me.

"Could have gone all the way up to the death penalty ..."
For a week, Baghdadi was hidden in Tehran before he sat in a car against the border. He shows the exact route on the map - points to the different transitions and explains - but does not want me to print exactly where he left Iran and what country he took.

People still have problems in that case.

"One of my friends brothers had done this before, so I had a contact with an old man working with this at the border, a human smuggler. 2 000 euros I paid to this guy there, and then he paid off by police and guards with a portion of that money. There are so many cameras there at the border, but this old man had been doing this for seven years. He could do his thing.

The original plan was presented. Baghdadi would crawl under a truck, finding a place where he could stick while the truck drove over from Iran.

He asked, "Are you ready?" But I only: "Well, I'm not a fan, I want to get over living".

It had to be the B plan instead. Less risk of injury, but also greater risk of detection.

"I walked into the cargo space, hid behind and under a lot of rice bags. It came in a police and searched for a flashlight, but he was one of those who had been paid by the smuggler.

What had happened if it was a real police, and he discovered you?

"I had so many different punishments ... It had started at six months in prison, and could have gone all the way up to the death penalty if they assumed that I was a foreign spy.

Ten minutes after the truck started to roll, it stopped. Mahan Baghdadi heard voices outside, voices spoken in a language other than Persian. He understood that he was over on the other side.

"I had a password, so I would only make myself know if anyone came in and shouted:" Ismael! ". But when the door was opened for the first time, no codeword came, but then I lay still under the rice and trembled. But the second time it came. So I got up from the rice.

Is it possible to describe the feeling then?

- Nä. Well, it does not actually.

" When I came to Arlanda, there were joyful years, but also this almost unrealistic feeling. "What have I been through? Did this happen? "

At a restaurant in Frihamnen in Stockholm is a young man with a story.

Listening to Mahan Baghdadi as a journalist is special because all that is going on is his own words, his personal story. In most cases, it is always possible to verify the information that someone presents, but this time it simply does not make it possible.

The Iranian army is not very keen on confirming posting information for missing desertors, Persian human traffickers are no longer easy to reach.

- But everything is true, 100 percent. Nothing is excessive, rather the opposite.

As he reproduces, Mahan Bahgdadi first needed to stay low in a city for a few days in the country he moved to while everything was organized with passport stamps, then he spent a few days in Paris on his way home to begin processing what he had been doing.

The first thing he did when he got out of the truck with the rice was to open a beer, the first thing he did when he landed in Sweden was to go to McDonald's.

"When I came to Arlanda, there were joyful years, but also this almost unrealistic feeling. "What have I been through? Do you even find this? ".

So far, it has not even been a month since the 23-year-old returned to Sweden, and he is talking about a type of rehabilitation period.

"Should find out what really meant"
Today, Mahan Baghdadi is 23 years old, and has still not played a single real match at the professional senior level.

Where does all the way go now?

The football is left - and the football should start rolling again - but the football can wait a little longer. Actually, there was a trial training in the Greek Andraligan last week, but he dismissed.

"Right now, I just want to land again. I know I have the quality, but now I have lost a year and I have to take a step backwards to take one step forward. My thought now is to come back to Swedish football seriously - to start talking with clubs when the Swedish season is over - and then take it from there. After what I've gone through, I have so much motivation.

Mahan Baghdadi still wears an Esteghlal necklace. As he reflects, the ease of being at home again blends with disappointment and sadness that everything became as it became.

It's not just that the dream of playing for the childhood club was crushed, but it is primarily a situation where Baghdadi will never be able to return to his country of birth unless Iran's Islamic regime falls.

They would take me right at the airport. It is sad, it is clear that it is, but hoping there will be a change in Iran is strong now. There is chaos there now, really bad. The value of money only drops, and Iran only goes down and down. 1 euro is 16,000 toman now, nobody can afford anything and anger grows.

Sadly, Mahan Baghdadi has a pretty unique insight into the Iranian army, and what he experienced there was no bloodthirsty war will, but rather a blend between discernment and panic.

"It was a military man there who told me," What are you doing? What are you doing here? Everything in Iran is over in seven, eight months. We are all flying now. " In about a year, it's run for the Islamic Republic, it's very close now. The military clubs have their own airport, and they have to close it because many of them have moved to Russia, Syria and Lebanon. But it will get worse before it gets better. Those who rule more often kill their own people than to step down.

When you think about everything that happened, all you've done ... What should you have done differently?

"I should have entered a lot more professionally, researched much more and found out what really was about. I should not have let Esteghlal just tell me where I would go and what I would do.

But you would believe it on them?

- Yes. "Rather I regret something I do than something I do not", all that. In any case, that was how I reasoned then. Today I do not know. That idea only goes to a certain limit, it can be dangerous too.

[Hormozgan]

This guy is delusional. Please also read Pezhman (from Gol Bezan) article fact-checking his lies: https://www.svenskafans.com/varlden/...er-592389.aspx

Erik Niva (one of Sweden most reknowned sports writers) also semi admitted he might've been duped by this idiots fake stories: https://twitter.com/ErikNiva/status/1041399858400321541

[Rezair]

I mean what do you expect of someone who calls himself "model" on his IG... he was also at the show "Rakhtkan" on Manoto and talked about this. But in this interview he is presenting it even bigger as he did on TV.
Don't know if he exaggerates interview by interview but he might overstate some of the parts to get attention...
I mean yes of course it is shocking how he was treated and what he went through but still...
Anyways movafagh bashe

[shahramii]

i never liked that guy because i knew all the time that he is fake.

[Shantaram]

Now I’ve read Pezmans article, this guys seems schizo! Sorry I even created this thread, can I delete it?

[AsOen5]

He is a liar. He reached out to me once for transfermarkt etc and he was bragging about offers from Esteghlal etc (which he never had)..
Still maybe there is some truth to this story, we can't be sure :/

[ShiroKhorshid]

This guy is such a big big fake, i dont even have words for it

[Nokhodi]

Lol. People still falling for this guys tricks.

[Foolad Khuzestan]

lol what a goozoo, never started to unfollow someone faster, only watch his videos on instagram, first he says what he is doing in farsi then he repeats the same in english lol boroo goozoo

[mistermo]

This guy's so hungry for attention, ffs