For someone who would come to deeply resent some of the attacks against Ghotbi, I must admit that my first impression of him was not all that positive. That was several years ago, a few years before Ghotbi returned to his native homeland to coach Perspolis. At the time, he seemed to be between jobs and was looking to get hooked up in some capacity with Iran's national team. He was appearing as a guest commentator on some Farsi language, satellite television, sports programs in Los Angeles. Without their jersey numbers to match to their names, at the time even some of Iran's better known players were obviously unknown to Ghotbi. Coupled with his difficulty speaking in his native tongue, Ghotbi to me seemed to be a foreigner looking for a job in Iran! His only advantage compared to any other foreigner was his Iranian name and his broken and barely intelligible Farsi. Otherwise, I was quite disappointed seeing someone with Ghotbi's background appear so clueless about Iran's football team. And have such difficulty even speaking in his native tongue. Even my next impression of Ghotbi remained less than positive. When he was invited to come to Iran to coach Perspolis, some folks found video clips of Ghotbi from Iran's match against South Korea in the 2004 Asian Cup, which they posted on the internet. At the time, Ghotbi was sitting on South Korea's bench as an assistant coach. And the clips I remembered showed Ghotbi cheering South Korea with a bit more enthusiasm than I would have thought appropriate. Those clips merely reinforced my view that Ghotbi was no Iranian. But if Ghotbi never quite became fluent in Farsi, even if his Farsi did improve, and even if Ghotbi never made me think that he was an Iranian nationalist, even if he had been thrust to carry to mantle for Iran as our coach, during his time in Iran, Ghotbi did show himself to be a knowledgeable coach and an even better manager. He did alright in terms of results as well, at least compared to any legitimate expectations that we might have had. To be sure, Ghotbi was no revolutionary: he helped conceal some of our weaknesses and kept Iran from descending to lower tiers in Asian football. He did so while showing class and manners, despite being so unfairly attacked by a football culture that has become so vulgar. But no doubt we still don't have the titles that have eluded us for so long and, no doubt, despite Ghotbi, teams like South Korea and Japan are getting ahead of us more clearly than ever before. Still, if Ghotbi's tenure left any lasting marks, I hope it will in his attitude, his manners and mannerisms: In his American "can do" attitude, which is so at odds with the lessons learned from a culture which merely looks for excuses to blame someone else for failure. His refusal to get negative and his emphasis on the positive. The fact that even in his broken Farsi, he came across more articulate and more inspiring than so many who can speak no other language but are so vulgar in the one language they do speak. Even if that is all Ghotbi left for us, that is still plenty. Hence, I thank him for doing his job well enough and wish him luck.
Regardless of how good or bad Ghotbi was I don't think he left anything for us. He didn't discover any player and he also didn't introduce a new style. He put most of his focus on removing side issues from inside TM (small assistant coaches that he could boss around easy and removing problem players) and using his contacts to control the external criticism (Navad being shut during the games). At the end of the day he will go down as a gutless coach in Iran's history and his greatest achievement will be winning against S Korea in a meaningless friendly! I think IFF is making the right decision currently around the coach situation. The plan is to hire 3 well known coaches from the same country to coach TM, Olympic TM and U19 TM for the next 3-4 years. If the plan goes through I predict a very strong soccer presence from Iran for the next decade. This system worked in Volleyball and Basketball (to some degree in our handball and cycling). It is very effective.
My own view is that players are not things you "discover" at the senior national level, but rather they either blossom first at the club and youth level or they don't. In any case, I disagree to some extent: while our team in the Asian Cup wasn't young, it did have quite a few youngsters and up and coming talents. Players like Haj Safie (despite my own doubts) solidified themselves in a post which Iran has sorely lacked options, namely at the left fullback position. Players like Ansarifard and Arash Afshin give us hope that our team will be alright in terms of forwards down the line. And we have a solid group of players who are at an age that they can still help us for some time, including a pretty good bench, even if these are not all necessarily youngsters per se. As for Ghotbi's real achievement, it has little to do with what you suggest. Beating S.Korea in Seoul in a friendly was nice but nothing that mattered. What mattered instead is that even though Iran came to the Asian Cup looking like a side that had not just fallen behind the top 3 in Asia, namely Japan, S.Korea and Australia, but that it had fallen behind even teams like Iraq, Bahrain, North Korea, Uzbekistan and many others. There were many pundits and experts on Asian football who were not even predicting Iran to get out of the group stage, even though in the past we were almost always a clear favorite to win the trophy. Needless to say, we not only qualified out of our group but for the first time since 1976 managed to do so with a perfect record! In the process, the downward spiral that seemed to have caught our team was stopped and most people would put Iran today right behind the top 3 in Asia. Which is not exactly a place I like for Iran, but which is still much better than where we seemed to be headed to. The other thing that mattered to me was that Ghotbi's management style: a style that I like to see emulated by others in Iran. Ghotbi was a knowledgeable coach and on that he gets rave reviews in that respect by coaches who are respected internationally. But he is even a better manager than coach. On that front in particular, a lot our domestic coaches have a lot to learn from Ghotbi and hopefully some did.
Supposedly Nekounam said all of this. And given that apparently there is no 90, it is becoming even more difficult to find out what may have happened behind the scenes: http://www.persianfootball.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93193
This is what Ghotbi is up to these days: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lIjhmLAKtE&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lIjhmLAKtE&feature=related[/ame]
Afshin Ghotbi has been rumoured to be offered manager job of Canada, according to Duerden. What can Canada expect from him? Cheers
Are you f**king kidding me? His job was to make his team better than your team as part of the coaching group, so if they score or something good then it means he was doing his job which makes one happy. It means he works hard for his team which is something you want in your coach, and the fact he could cheer like that displays the professionalism he has. What did you want him to do? Rig his team to lose just to serve Iran?
