Everyone is kissing and making up!

This appears to be the season for kissing and making up in Iranian football! Over the course of the last couple of weeks a few coaches and players who had had very loud and public falling outs have publicly made up!

First, there was former Team Melli coach Mohammad Mayelikohan and Perspolis coach Afshin Ghotbi. Not a very popular, but outspoken, person, Mayelikohan had publicly criticized Ghotbi for everything from his on field tactics to his marital situation. Ghotbi had refused to hit back as hard, but had pointed to Mayelikohan’s unsuccessful coaching history in recent years.

Mayelikohan showed up at a Perspolis training session the other day and the two issued a joint statement after kissing and making up!

Not wanting to be outdone, Team Melli coach Ali Daei and Esteghlal head coach Amir Ghalehnoei did the same on the day of Team Melli and DPR Korea encounter a couple of weeks ago. On the same day, by the way, many former coaches and football personalities who had previously been unkind to each other showed up for the game and all sat peacefully and happily in the same section. A few were even caught on camera speaking to each other!!

Then today, Ali Daei paid a surprise visit to Perspolis locker room at the half of their match against Bargh and made it all good between him and former Team Melli midfielder Ali Karimi.

Ghotbi, who is not in the best of terms with Daei, was not too happy about the visit claiming that the visit could have distracted Karimi from the game.

Karimi, for his part, thanked Daei for being gracious, but stated that the visit does not change his mind regarding his international retirement. In other words, he will not play for Daei.

It remains to be seen if the visit did any good for the Ghotbi / Daei relationship.

It’ll be interesting to see for how long these truces will last. Based on my experience with Iranian football, two weeks would be very optimistic!