A young Iranian football fan looks on
Iran national team coach Afshin Ghotbi has had a quite remarkable career path, taking in spells as an assistant with both South Korea and LA Galaxy prior to his appointment with Iran last year.
From The National
Afshin Ghotbi chooses his words carefully. Sometimes he exhales loudly before answering, as if every question is a landmine lying in wait.
At others he begins with an explanatory caveat in his sparsely American drawl, an accent which still betrays its Persian roots even though he spent the best part of three decades estranged from his ancestral home.
The 45-year-old coach of the Iranian national football team has good grounds to be careful. To start with he has one of the toughest jobs, not just in football, but in Iran.
In a nation famously passionate about its football, it is joked that Team Meli has an avid following of 70 million. In other words, the country’s total population, man, woman and child.
Passion
The passion is such that derbies like that between Esteghlal and Persepolis, not to mention international games, can fill one of the biggest grounds in the world, Tehran’s Azadi stadium even when held at 5pm on a Wednesday.
It is no surprise then that a loose word in the media, no matter where in the world, is headline news for Iran’s zealous sports press.
Secondly, when he was hired after the disastrous tenure of the Iranian legend Ali Daei, who had brought them to the brink, but not quite, of elimination from World Cup 2010 qualification, he became the first American citizen to get the job.
It was a bold move in a country known to have a rocky relationship with the so called “Great Satan”. But still, Americans aren’t usually welcomed with open arms in many positions in Iranian public life.
Finally, if that wasn’t already a tough set of circumstances to operate in, his players then made headlines around the world for allegedly making a political gesture during a World Cup match in support of Iran’s reform movement just as violent unrest was fermenting back home.
Incensed
The move incensed the authorities so much that a pro-government newspaper reported that the guilty players would be banned from football for life and their passports seized. The story was in every paper from The New York Times to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I’m a football man and I try to make it all about the game,” Ghotbi begins magnanimously. “Politics in football has become the norm all around the world. There is even politics in the youth game in the local park.”
And yet for all the controversy, Ghotbi got the nod. How he went from coaching US college football to leading the nation of his birth, however, is a remarkable story.
He arrived in the United States at the age of 13, shortly before Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, a development that separated him from his mother until he returned home for the first time nearly 30 years later.
After earning his coaching stripes in college football, he travelled to the World Cup in France with Team USA. This time he was on the other side of the fence, scouting for the Americans, who had a tricky group match against Iran to worry about.
Celebrations
Iran famously won that game 2-1, prompting a million people to take to the streets of Tehran to celebrate. At the next World Cup he worked under Guus Hiddink with a South Korea team that stormed to the semi-finals.
But it wasn’t until 2007 that an opportunity presented itself to return to Iran as coach of Persepolis. By now Ghotbi had acquired something of a reputation in his homeland.
Here was an Iranian coach, by blood, who had top foreign experience. Some called for his appointment as national coach immediately.
Thousands thronged the airport when he left his Dubai base and arrived back in the country of his birth for the first time in three decades, showering him with flowers.
Suspicion
And yet, for all the public outpourings of love, Ghotbi was eyed with suspicion, especially by those within the footballing elite. Even some coaches and players within his own team were critical in public.
“I have been fortunate to have captured the hearts of Iranian fans,” he said cautiously. “But some coaches in Iran tried to use my citizenship against me.
"Being an outsider combined with my immediate success in Iranian football created a lot of resentment in the coaching community. Hiddink suffered from the same resentment in Korea with Korean coaches.
"I love Iran and the people of Iran. I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to serve and make a difference in the future of Iranian football.”
Excerpt from The National
