I knew I'd heard this name somewhere but it took me some time to remember where. In case you can't remember (which seems quite likely), Zayed was a young Irish forward who came to Crewe Alexandra on loan in January 2004 from Bray Wanderers. He was highly rated and had already represented Republic of Ireland at under 21 level. He'd just been on trial at Everton, Dynamo Moscow had invited him to train with them and parts of the press had linked him with Barcelona (honestly!).
I've no idea why it didn't work out for Zayed at Crewe, but he never played a single game in England. He was talked up quite highly when he joined, Dario seemed quite keen to sign him permanently (he was already talking publicly about compensation). For whatever reason, he never did get a first team chance and returned to Bray at the end of the season.
In 2013, Zayed is a full international with Libya and plays for Iranian side Aluminium Hormozgan. I don't think many would have seen that coming from a 20 year old Irish triallist... When he returned to Ireland from his unsuccessful spell with the Alex, he played for Drogheda United (where he was the club's top scorer as they won the league), Sporting Fingal and Derry City and scored loads of goals for all three clubs.
By this point, Zayed had made the decision to abandon his ambitions of playing for Ireland and accepted an offer to join up with Libya (who he qualified for through his father). It was while playing for Libya that he attracted the attention of one of the biggest clubs in Iran; Persepolis (which also the title of one of my favourite films of recent years).
He soon joined up with the club but didn't feature for them very often at first, he made only one substitute appearance in his first few weeks in Iran. But he wasn't to be held back for long...
The Tehran derby between Persepolis and Esteghlal is a huge deal in Asia. It is said to be the biggest in the continent and attracts crowds of over 100,000. This is the game in which Zayed made his second substitute appearance for his new club. Before he was able to get onto the pitch, his team had gone 2-0 down and been reduced to ten men, but Zayed managed to convert a one-on-one after 82 minutes to give Persepolis some hope. In the next 10 minutes he changed his life forever by equalising with a header before turning and shooting to complete his hat-trick and hand his side a quite ridiculous victory. You can watch his goals below, check out how crazy the supporters go after the third.
After this, he was awarded Goal.com's world performance of the week and he earned the quite brilliant nickname of 'Mr. Hat-trick' from Persepolis fans, and the club's supporters seemed to really love him. He was quoted as saying:
At the stadium the whole place went mad. I’ve never seen anything like it. On the bus players were coming up to me kissing me, hugging me, telling me that I didn’t realise what I had just done.Following this, he was often stopped by grateful fans who wanted to buy him dinner, give him cash gifts or even invite him to their weddings as a special guest. I guess Iranians care deeply about this beautiful game of ours.
This was not his only hat-trick for Persepolis either; he scored one in an Asian Champions League game and one in another league game. Unsurprisingly, he was soon given a contract extension. However, in what is becoming a common theme in Zayed's career, he has since been forced to leave due to his club's financial problems (this is also why he left both Drogheda and Fingal) but has stayed in Iran by signing a short team deal with the brilliantly-named Aluminium Hormozgan.
He's not the only ex-Crewe loan player to be in the Middle East either, Madjid Bougherra followed money to sign for Qatari side Lekhwiya. If you know of any other former Crewe players who ply their trade in similarly exotic places, I'd love to hear about it.
I got much of my information from this excellent backpagefootball article by Conor Clancy. The BBC interview is available here or on iTunes.
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