Iran’s bizarre search for a new football chief

A funny thing the politics of Iranian football! Just when you think the football brains in the country are suffering from severe case of mental constipation they prove you wrong by showing signs of excessive diarrhea!!

Last year FIFA demanded that the Iranian Football Federation’s structure and bylaws be changed to ensure its NGO status. It took the Iranian football think tanks over a year to draft the new documents.

The next step was electing a new football chief to lead the reorganized federation; so qualified candidates were asked to submit their names. Simple enough, isn’t it? Not so fast!

As it stands now, IRIFF is under the umbrella of Iran’s National Organization of Physical Education that oversees all sports matter. Leading this organization is Mohammad Aliabadi, who happens to be one of the many Vice Presidents to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Don’t ask me how it works but in Iran we have more than one Vice President!). Mr. Aliabadi’s position makes him the boss of the football chief meaning that he could “order” the football chief to do things as he pleases. This in itself was one of the problems FIFA wanted fixed. Mr. Aliabadi’s political status made this arrangement too inconvenient for the supposed NGO status of IRIFF.

Now let’s get back to the hopeful candidates submitting their names; guess who submitted his name for the job? Yes, none other than Mr. Aliabadi who claims he can handle both jobs!

Upon hearing Mr. Aliabadi’s candidacy, a few of the shrewder candidates withdrew their names claiming that with Mr. Aliabadi in the race they are confident that Iranian football will be in good hands!

Even funnier is that in an interview Mr. Aliabadi claimed to know what Iran’s football problems were and further claims to have all the solution in the form of a grand plan! One wonders why Mr. Aliabadi was holding out to his solutions over the last three years while Iranian football was going on a downward spiral.

Wait for the next episode to unfold after FIFA hears about this as you can bet your paycheck that some disenchanted candidates are working on their letters to FIFA right now!