Dezhaga, Ashkan

Ashkan Dejaga was born in Tehran . His family moved to Berlin when the future footballer was a year old. At 16, Ashkan received German citizenship and, accordingly, the right to play for the German national team .

Dezhaga began his career playing for the Rainikendorf club. In 1999, he moved to Tennis-Borussia , where he did not stay long and a year later went to the Berlin Hertha . Dezhaga played in the Hertha youth team for 4 years, and at the age of 18 he made his debut in the Bundesliga . The young striker spent the first match against Bochum , replacing him in the 85th minute and becoming the youngest player to ever play for the club since its founding in 1892. In the first 2 years, Dezhaga appeared on the fields of the first Bundesliga only 4 times. In the regional league, where Hertha played, the success of Ashkan is much more solid: in the 2005/06 season he became the top scorer of the championship, scoring 12 goals.

In 2007, Dezhaga moved to Wolfsburg , where, under the leadership of a new coach, Felix Magat, he began to regularly appear on the field in the starting lineup. For the first season, he scored 8 goals, becoming one of the club's top scorers. “Wolfsburg” took fifth place in the Bundesliga, which was the best achievement of the club in history. The next season, Ashkan was much less productive, but the wolves became the champions of Germany through the efforts of Edin Dzeko , Grafite and Zvezdan Misimovich .

On the last day of the summer transfer window 2012/13, Ashkan goes to the London Fulham ^[3] . After the departure of Fulham from the Premier League following the results of the 2013/14 season, he moved to the Qatari club Al-Arabi ^[4] .

Ashkan was 16 years old when he received his first invitation to the national team. Previously, he received invitations from Iran , but, according to him, he never seriously considered them ^[5] . In 2004 he moved to the youth team (for players under 19 years old). In 15 international matches he was able to score 7 goals and in 2005 he was invited to play for the youth team, where he received the coveted 10th number.

In October 2007, Dejaga was due to play in a match against the Israeli team . But Ashkan refused to participate in this match, citing "very personal reasons" and said: "after all, everyone knows that I am half Iranian." Charlotte Knobloch , president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Ronald Pofalla , general secretary of the German Christian Democratic Union , demanded the exclusion of Ashkan Dejagi from the German national team ^[6] . In an interview with Stern magazine, Ashkan said that his decision was caused only by personal, but not political, anti-Semitic or racist reasons ^[7] . After that, he was visited by the president of the German football union Leo Zwanziger and sports director Matthias Zammer , who agreed that there were no other reasons, besides personal ones, in that decision, and left Ashkan in the team ^[8] .

Having played for Germany at age 21, Ashkan, according to the rules of FIFA, lost the opportunity to play for the Iranian team ^[9] .

His best achievement in the games for Germany was his performance at the 2009 European Championships in Sweden , where the German youth team won first place.

In July 2009, FIFA adopted amendments to its rules, and Ashkan again got the opportunity to play for Iran ^[10] .

Included in the national team for the Asian Cup 2019 . January 7 in the first match of the group stage against Yemen scored a goal in the 23rd minute of the game. As a result, the Iranian team won 5-0. In the 1/8 final match, he scored the second goal of his team against Oman in the 41st minute of the game from the penalty spot (2: 0) and helped the team reach the quarter-finals.

Wolfsburg

• German Football Championship 2009

International Germany (up to 21)

• European Football Championship among youth teams - 2009