Reza Abedian

From player to coach

Reza Abedian spent eight seasons in the red of Persepolis, one of the biggest
clubs in Asia, and supporters still remember him for his goal in the Tehran
derby against Esteghlal.

Born in Tehran in 1968, Reza came through the Persepolis academy and broke into
the first team in 1983 under the Iranian legend Ali Parvin. A forward standing
1.81 m, he became a fixture in the side and stayed eight seasons, scoring more
than forty goals for the club. In those years he won the Tehran championship
twice and the Iranian national championship, and he captained the Red Army — as
Persepolis supporters call the club — for two seasons.

He joined Pas Tehran in 1991 and won the Iranian league once more, then
finished his playing career at Keshavarz between 1992 and 1995. Along the way
he shared a dressing room with a generation of Iranian internationals, among
them Sirous Ghayeghran, Samad Marfavi, Nader Mohammadkhani and Mohammad Hassan
Ansarifard.

Reza also represented his country at three levels: the Iranian Youth National
Team in 1985, the Iranian National Army Team in 1986 and 1987, and the senior
Iran National Team in 1988. He finished as Iran's leading scorer at an
international tournament with the Army team.

When he stopped playing, Reza went back to the classroom. Over ten years he
worked through every AFC coaching qualification in turn — the D, C, B and A
licences — and then earned the FIFA Pro Licence, the highest coaching
certificate in the game and one held by only a small number of Iranian coaches.

He returned to Persepolis as assistant coach with the U23 side, and went on to
work as assistant manager at Kosar and as assistant and then manager at Steel
Azin, alongside Hamid Estili. At the same time he ran his own soccer schools in
Iran, teaching more than two hundred young players.

Reza moved to Toronto in 2009 and founded Excel Pro Soccer Academy, which today
runs programs for every age from young children through to adult teams. Since
2011 his sides have won the Hangar Indoor League Division 1 on four occasions
and taken the Markham adult championship twice. The academy trains at Ashton
Meadows Park in Markham, with programs for boys and girls from age five through
eighteen alongside its competitive and adult teams.