Reading Coach Clement Looks Forward to Work with Ezatolahi

The International midfielder joined Championship side Reading on loan from Russian football team Rostov.

Ezatolahi played at the 2018 World Cup for his nation against Spain and Portugal in Group B, and has won 27 caps in total for Iran.

“I hope he has a long future here,” the Reading coach told wokinghampaper.com.

“The situation with the deal at the moment is he’s on a loan for the season because when we signed him, it was obviously outside the period where we could do a permanent, so it’s on an initial loan," Clement noted.

“Hopefully he does really well and it’s a long-term thing. It was brought to my attention late in the window. We had a week. During that week it was about gathering as much intelligence as possible, speaking to people he had worked with."

“Fortunately I was able to have a good conversation with Carlos Queiroz, who spoke really highly of him. Then I spoke to the player and got a really good feel about him and we’re really pleased to get it over the line. It was a little bit complicated. You’re dealing with Russia, you’ve got the situation where he’s Iranian so you’ve got the visa issues, international clearance and those type of things,” Clement added.

“He had his medical in Belgium at Roeselare because it was difficult to get him here to do the medical because of the visa, but in the end we got it over the line. A really complicated deal,” he stated.

“We’re looking forward to working with him. I think he’s going to be a good addition to us,” Clement concluded.