How often does he play for the national team? Because given Iran is ranked higher than 50, 37th I think, if he's playing over 75% of the games then doesn't he automatically qualify for a permit?
Indeed. The headline in the mail was probably quite misleading, stating that we were poised to sign both him and Arce, when in fact, the Arce deal we referred to by the player himself as '90% advanced', yet the mail article says we were were only talking to Morteza, which indicated a deal is...
Read into this what you like, given Naylor has already said no, but this turkish guy who has 98k followers and looks fairly itk at Trabzonspor (the club Morteza was supposed to sign for) is claiming that we HAVE in fact stepped in.
https://twitter.com/yunusemresel/status/1022754658593525761