Alireza Jahanbakhsh made the acquaintance of the Feyenoord supporters in De Kuip on Saturday. The 27-year-old attacker, who came over from Brighton & Hove Albion, was in the stands at the friendly match against Werder Bremen (2-1 win) and gave an interview at halftime. ESPN. “I’m going to play with number 9 but I will definitely come for a role on the wings or the number ten position,” said Jahanbakhsh, who takes over the jersey number from Nicolai Jörgensen.
Jahanbakhsh has previously played in the Netherlands for NEC and AZ and is happy to be back. “I always call the Netherlands my second home, so it’s great to be here,” said the Iranian in fluent English, who showed later in the interview that he still has fluent Dutch. “Why did I choose Feyenoord? To be honest, the away games I played against Feyenoord were always the best. I mean: the atmosphere and the people here are great.”
Arne Slot, who was an assistant coach during Jahanbakhsh’s AZ time, also influenced the transfer. “We’ve had a lot of contact in recent months. Slot asked me to switch. At the beginning I wasn’t sure if it would happen. But it’s clear that the supporters here are fantastic, I love how fanatical they are Feyenoord is a big club in the Netherlands and also in Europe. The history of the club is great. All those things together convinced me to come here.”
Jahanbakhsh struggled with his reserve role at Brighton. “As a player you want to play week in, week out. There were opportunities for me to change clubs before. It was three years at Brighton with ups and downs. I was not happy with some of the decisions there. Especially the way played on, especially the last two years, in a 3-5-2 formation, they didn’t use real wing strikers.It was a difficult decision on the one hand because Brighton is a beautiful club with great supporters too, but from a football perspective it was a good decision.”
Bryan Linssen’s reaction to the arrival of Jahanbakhsh
Bryan Linssen started on Saturday against Werder Bremen as a right winger, the likely position of Jahanbakhsh. Nevertheless, Linssen does not fear the arrival of the Iranian. “The last time I played on the right may have been in my VVV time, that was a very long time ago. I won’t stay there either, but as long as they need me I will play there. If I get Jahanbakhsh out of the base? Well, I’m afraid of it,” he laughs. “I don’t know where I’m going to play. I hope we get far in the Conference League, so we can play a lot of games. Whether I play right winger, left winger or striker… in that respect I have an advantage and disadvantage that I can be used anywhere.”