Adelaide United defender Iain Fyfe has left the A-League for the second time, departing for Mes Kerman of the Iran Pro League. The 31-year-old played 23 times for the Reds last season but was a casualty of new manager Josep Gombau’s desire to rid his roster of so many center backs.
Iain Fyfe leaves Adelaide for Iran
Adelaide’s central defender leaves South Australia on a free transfer, joining Mes Kerman of the Iran Pro League midseason.
Vince Caligiuri
Fyfe, who played in the A-League at Sydney FC (2005-09) and Adelaide on two different occasions (2009-11; 2012-13), required roughly AU$284,000 in wages but exited Adelaide on a free transfer, according to a report at Goal Australia. Through four weeks of the 2013/14 season, Kerman are in fourteenth place in the sixteen-team top flight in Iran, though they have allowed just three goals to date. The club missed a place in the Asian Champions League last season by just three points.
Last week, Adelaide gave Fyfe permission to travel to Iran and undergo a medical. Gombau expressed concern that his club carried too many central defenders, which could be a hindrance to his plan of implementing his possession-oriented style at the Coopers Stadium. Earlier this week Gombau was quoted in Goal Australia as saying:
”We have five central defenders but only one left back. The problem isn’t that the five central defenders cannot learn the style, they can learn it with work. But why should I work with five central defenders, when I just need four and one more left back?
“The problem is that the team at the moment is not balanced like what we need.”
Fyfe’s departure leaves Gombau with his desired four central defenders.
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