News / Sports

Legend Iranian footballer Homayoun Behzadi dies at 73

Friday, 22 January 2016 2:56 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 22 January 2016 3:37 PM ]

Iranian legendary footballer Homayoun Behzadi dies at the age of 73.

Former Iranian legend striker, Homayoun Behzadi, who won continental titles with Iranian national football team decades ago, has died. He was 73.

Iranian media said Behzadi, who had been suffering for a long time from a lung disease, died in his house overnight Friday.

A goalscorer for generations, Behzadi was known for his prolific career in the 1970s with Perspolis, a giant football club based in Tehran. He drove the Reds to two national league titles in 1972 and 1974.

Behzadi was also part of Iran’s title-winning national team in the 1968 Asian Nations Cup, scoring an unforgettable leveler in the final against the Israeli outfit and four other goals in four matches, which made him one of the tournament’s top scorers. The legend striker also won the same title in 1972, while he reached the final of the Asian Games with Iran in Thailand in 1966.

The death of Behzadi came few days after Reza Ahadi, also known like Behzadi for his lethal headers, passed away at the age of 53 due to an acute liver failure. Ahadi played for Esteghlal, an archrival of Perspolis in the Iranian football. Fans of the two teams named their legends as “Sar Talayi”, or golden headers, due to their great abilities to get things right in the air.

Hamid Reza Sadr, a TV pundit and a fan of Behzadi, wrote of him on Friday in an emotional reminder, saying, “The humble guy never spoke of his multi-meter jumps in the air ... but in his final years of life, he was always speaking of a slow jump from a crag...”

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