December 21, 2018
Iranian-American soccer coach Afshin Qotbi, who has been circling Asia coaching teams in one country after another, has
returned to Iran to take over as coach of Foolad Khuzestan, which now sits unimpressively in ninth place of the 16-team Iranian premiere league.
He is the fourth coach hired this season by Ahvaz-based Foolad, which has been unimpressed with the performances of the first three coaches over the 14 weeks of the 30-week annual season.
News reports said Qotbi signed an 18-month contract, meaning he is committed to Foolad for the rest of this season and the entirety of next year’s season.
Foolad (Steel) finished in first place in the league twice, in the 2004-05 and 2013-14 seasons. Its worst season was 2006-07, when it finished in 15th place and relegated to the second-rank league. But it finished in first place the next season and was promoted back to the top league. Since then, except for the one year in first place, Foolad has finished between fourth place and 14th place over 10 seasons.
Qotbi, 54, was born in Jahrom, but emigrated to the United States with his father when he was 13 years old.
After graduating from UCLA, he began his soccer coaching career as an assistant at the university. He never played professionally. He served as an assistant with the national teams in the United States and in South Korea, where he met and married his wife.
In 2007, Persepolis, which had been unable to lead the league for six years, hired Qotbi as coach and he swiftly took the team very dramatically to first place, becoming a huge celebrity in Iran; the team won first place in the 96th minute of the final game of the season with 110,000 fans going bananas in Azadi Stadium. “There are no words in any language that can describe the feeling of winning there,” Qotbi said.
But there was internal strife during the next season and Qotbi quit.
Shortly, however, he was named coach of the national team and led it through the Asian Cup in 2011, when Iran lost in the quarterfinals. His star was somewhat tarnished and the sharp knives were out to get him.
After two years on the national team, he left Iran and took over as head coach of Shimizu S-Pulse in Japan for three years. But that team remained pinned down in the middle of the standings his entire time there.
In 2016, he went to Thailand and took over Buriram United, the top team in the national league. But that didn’t work out and he left after just three months.
His next stop was for two years in China as head coach of Shijiazhuang Ever Bright. His left there in September, and was soon picked up by Foolad.
In most of his coaching posts, he won just a little more than half the games he participated in. His worst output was in Japan, where he only won 40 percent of the matches. The team there had been in the top seven in each of the five years before Qotbi arrived, but it then slipped to 10th, 9th, 9th and 15th while Qotbi was there.
His Chinese team slipped from the first division to the second division. But the fans were seen teary-eyed when he left the field at the end of his last game.
Qotbi has so far worked in seven countries and has become popular with fans everywhere, even when his teams weren’t winning.
In a recent interview, he said, “Football is my religion. The club is my home. And the players are my family. There is no perfect coach, but it challenges us to get better every day. New ideas are all around us. We can learn from everyone. The key is to listen with an open mind and an open heart.” He has said his dream is to coach a team in Germany.
