The day after!

March 4th, 2008 | by: Afshin Afshar |

The news of Ali Daei’s appointment was received very positively by the usually critical and negative Iranian sports media.

The news got plenty of coverage outside of Iran as well. On of the more interesting articles I read about Daei’s appointment was a commentary by John Duerden, goal.com’s Asian Editor, who has been following Iranian football for a few years. He compared the love affair Iranian football fans have with Team Melli to that of the New Castle United fans. An interesting analogy, I thought.

One bummer about all of this was the way IRIFF handled the situation with Afshin Ghotbi who was told the job was his just a couplw of hours before, to most everyone’s surprise, Daei’s name was announced as the man for the job.

Always a class act, Afshin Ghotbi wished Daei the best of luck, and pledged his and Perspolis FC’s support for him. but also said that he had no interest in becoming Daei’s assistant.