Send us a manager, please!

There is a funny thing about us Iranians! No matter what corner of the country we are from and what project it is that we are working on, you can always count on us screwing up the management part of it in royal fashion! Football is no exception of course!

Take the case with finding a new coach for the national team. First the federation bosses disgracefully dismissed the former coach Amir Ghalehnoei whose team failed to impress in the Asian Nations Cup last year. Then the federation bosses themselves got in hot waters with FIFA over the good old mixing the politics with football matter, and had to be replaced. That process dragged on for months.

In the meanwhile, the team had no coach for months, so the interim football boss stepped in and reached a tentative agreement with Portuguese coach Artur Jorge. But the incoming permanent boss, if there is such thing in Iranian football, and his people decided not to finalize the contract and went about courting Javier Clemente of Spain instead. That is all nice and dandy; the only trouble was that they forgot to tell the poor chap that they expected him to live in Iran for the duration of his two year contract. So after Mr. Clemente signed his copy and sent it back, the Iranian Federation folks wanted to add that condition as an addendum. Clemente, understandably so, did not take kindly to that and the whole deal fell apart.

Now here we are with only a few weeks left to the second qualifying match against Kuwait, and once again we are caught with our fingers up our noses!

Can’t someone send these guys to an intense MBA program or something comparable so they can at least learn to think half a step ahead? Honestly, we couldn’t have been that bad at this forever. Can you imagine Xerxes at the Hellespont wondering why he did not think of bringing along ropes he needed to tie the boats together to make the bridge?! But wait, I think it was the Ionians who helped him with that, no? Oh, I don’t know!