BOLTON’S NEW STAR TEYMOURIAN FEELING AT HOME

Persian League, Iran
April 17 2007

GOAL – Bolton Wanderers’ new star Andranik Teymourian is settling
in nicely in England. The Armenian-born Iranian midfielder was in
the headlines after his two goals against Wigan last week gave the
Trotters a 3-1 win.

"To be the only Iranian playing in England makes me feel very proud,"
the 24 year-old told The Guardian.

"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."

"The culture is not massively different for me in England because
what I was doing in Iran I now do here," Teymourian says.

In an international league, Bolton is one of the most cosmopolitan
clubs with a number of nationalities.

"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."

The highly-rated former Abu Moslem star rejected offers from the
Middle-East and Germany for the Premier League to head to the
north-west.

"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.