Football: Bolton’s Iranian bridging the cultural gulf: Andranik Teymourian’s
goals have finally made him feel at home in England, he tells Daniel Taylor
DANIEL TAYLOR, The Guardian – United Kingdom
Published: Apr 14, 2007

It was a balmy summer evening in Nuremberg when Andranik Teymourian
first came to the attention of Sam Allardyce. Iran were on their way
to a 3-1 defeat against Mexico and an early exit from the World Cup
finals but for the one Christian in an otherwise Muslim team it was to
be a night that opened the door to a new life.

Bolton Wanderers parted with pounds 255,000 to prise Teymourian away
from FC AbooMoslem, a Mashhad-based club partly funded by the Iranian
military, and there have been the first indications recently that
Allardyce has unearthed a bargain. Teymourian has needed time to
acclimatise, which is probably only to be expected for a 24-year-old
from Tehran with only the most basic grasp of English, but he has now
forced his way into a side that travels to Arsenal today still
harbouring aspirations of beating them to the Premiership’s fourth
spot – and a place in next season’s Champions League qualifying
stages.

Teymourian, or "Ando" as he has become known to his team-mates, has
also scored his first Premiership goals, netting twice in Bolton’s 3-1
win at Wigan Athletic last weekend, and it is a measure of his
popularity in Iran that his match-winning contribution has been shown
every hour, on the hour, on the nation’s television news channels.

"To be the only Iranian playing in England makes me feel very proud,"
he says. "I’m hoping I can be a good advert for English football and
particularly for Bolton Wanderers. My photograph has been in all the
Iranian newspapers and the goals are being replayed all the time. Not
many people in Iran knew much of Bolton but I hope there will be
people in Tehran wearing Bolton shirts the next time I go home."

An athletic, predominantly right-sided midfielder, Teymourian is
regarded by Allardyce as "a player of immense potential" and the
fittest professional at the Reebok Stadium by some distance. The
fitness coaches set him four different endurance tests on his first
day at the club and had to stop him after the first to tell him he
needed to pace himself. A puzzled Teymourian asked his interpreter, a
pizza shop owner from Burnley, to explain: "This is the speed at which
he always goes."

"The culture is not massively different for me in England because what
I was doing in Iran I now do here," Teymourian says. "The only problem
is the language barrier and for the first five or six months that was
really hard. It’s getting easier now, though, and I’ve picked up a lot
of the football terms.

"The most important thing for me was to understand my manager and,
after that, to learn the other things. Sometimes people here speak
really fast and because of their strong accents I don’t understand
much. But I understand part of what Sam Allardyce is saying now and we
get along really well."

It helps him, he says, that he has an entourage of Iranian friends
living in the north-west. Acclimatising, however, cannot always have
been easy given the recent hostilities between his native country and
his adopted one. "I came here to play football and I don’t want to
talk about the political side of it," Teymourian, whose family are of
Armenian descent, makes clear early in his interview. "That’s a dif
ferent thing altogether. I am not a politician. All I will say is that
the Iranians are good people. You have to have a connection with them,
you have to talk to them more and then you will know what sort of
people they are."

He is hopeful, he says, that other clubs will take Bolton’s lead and
start exploring the Iranian Premier League for new players. "I think
there are other players who can come over but maybe they have to show
themselves in big tournaments such as the World Cup. I am certainly
very happy in Bolton. It is like a family and I am really grateful to
all the players and the coaches and my manager for the way they have
helped me. They have done their best to make me feel welcome and it is
very appreciated.

"After the World Cup I had plenty of offers from Arab and German teams
but I wanted to play in England because the way the teams play
football here you will not see anywhere else in the world. All the top
clubs – Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool – are always
on television back in Iran and I love their style of play. The Iranian
television channels are not sophisticated enough to show the lower
division teams but the Premiership is always shown and I saw my style
suiting English football better than anywhere else. I want to improve
my game and I know this is the best place to do that."