January 10, 2020
Afshin Ghotbi says that after 15 years coaching all around Asia, he is eager to return to the United States and re-join Major League Soccer (MLS), the American professional soccer league, where a half-dozen teams and now looking for coaches.
He is now in China where he just enjoyed notable success. He was hired last July to coach Shijiazhuang Ever Bright, a team mired in the second-ranked league of China. He coached the final third of the season, winning 10 of its last 13 matches and leading the team to first place, which means it has been elevated for next year to China’s Super League.
Ghotbi, now 55, was born in Iran but moved to the US when he was 13 and later married a Korean woman. He played soccer in high school and college, but never professionally. He started coaching fresh out of college in the United States
In 2000, Ghotbi found himself marveling at where life had taken him. Here was an Iranian-born, American-raised soccer coach, heading to Hong Kong from Los Angeles on a British Airways flight so he could interview with a Dutchman to be an assistant coach for South Korea’s national team.
“If that’s not globalization, I’m not sure what is,” he said recently during an exclusive interview with ESPN FC.
His coaching career has spanned three decades across 12 different teams. He’s been part of coaching staffs at three World Cups and spent the past dozen years in Asia, coaching in four different countries.
ESPN interviewer Jeff Carlisle said, “In many ways, Ghotbi is US soccer’s international man of mystery, fulfilling several key roles through the years while remaining largely unknown.”
He played collegiately at UCLA from 1981-85 and the US is where his coaching career began. His last stateside coaching gig, however, was as an assistant to Steve Sampson with the LA Galaxy in 2005. But Ghotbi told ESPN he still holds aspirations of coaching once again in his adopted homeland.
“I feel that my experiences and my qualities can bring something very different to the league and the players in MLS,” he said. “I think because I’ve been 15 years away most people have forgotten or don’t know me, but I think once they get to know me and see how I work, they will love the way my teams will play. I really think I can reach into the hearts of every player and make them giants.”
Ghotbi was born in Tehran, and his love for the game of soccer started there. He recalls playing in the streets with friends: bricks were used for goals, cars were defenders and combination passes were played off houses. “And sometimes angry neighbors,” he noted with a laugh.
In 1978, after his parents divorced and his father had remarried to an American, Ghotbi moved to the US at the age of 13. Settling in the LA suburb of Glendale, Ghotbi played soccer. “At that moment, soccer was not so big in America. You not only had to become a player but a promoter. You had to be a coach and you had to multi-task to play the game you love,” he said.
Ghotbi excelled as a player in high school and he was good enough to walk on to the UCLA team. Upon graduating with a degree in electrical engineering, Ghotbi founded the American Global Soccer School in 1988. It soon grew into 10 teams and 1,000 students each year. Ghotbi said his motivation was borne of something he had seen at UCLA.
“Even the UCLA players missed the technical quality they needed to play at the highest level,” he said. “The reason is when they’re younger, no one is working with them.”
Ghotbi’s contacts in Southern California — Sampson in particular — led to him being named an assistant coach for the US men’s national team for the 1998 World Cup, with a special emphasis on scouting Iran. Iran prevailed 2-1 on a night in which the US failed to convert some clear chances. The result eliminated the US from the tournament. But for Ghotbi, it made a deep impression that went beyond the game.
“To see fans that had American flags on one cheek and an Iranian flag on the other cheek, or a Persian man and an American woman, a married couple, in the stands, and to see that kind of friendship between two countries that have so many political problems, it really excited me to realize the power of the game,” he said.
“I think regardless of our nationality and regardless of our culture, there are certain things all human beings share. When I go into a particular team or a country, the love of the game is very important. I think the respect you give each other is very important. Trying to listen and learn about how each culture behaves and how they think.”
After the World Cup, Ghotbi planned to return to his soccer school, but thanks to his overseas connections, South Korea and Guus Hiddink came calling with a special task to address a special challenge. A coaching staff that largely didn’t speak Korean — one of five languages Ghotbi now speaks — needed a way to get their points across beyond translating their instructions. So Ghotbi was asked to reprise a role he had taken with the US, that of using video to reinforce tactical concepts.
“At that time, nobody was creating animations and breaking images down, bringing pictures into a computer and drawing over them,” Ghotbi told ESPN. “Hiddink was quite clever because he thought, ‘This can help me because I don’t speak Korean.’”
When he was reunited with his old friend Sampson at the LA Galaxy, Ghotbi was tasked with providing the tactical preparation.
“[Ghotbi] was ahead of his time in terms of the video presentations that he did,” said then-Galaxy defender Todd Dunivant, now the general manager of USL Championship side Sacramento Republic. “He was very precise and the detail he worked with was very high level. He always went the extra step. The way he talks about the game, talks about opponents, it’s very impassioned. And he’s fearless. He’s not afraid to take on a challenge.”
That trait helped in 2007 when Ghotbi took on his first managerial job with Tehran’s Persepolis, one of the biggest clubs in Asia.
Ghotbi was reconnecting with the country of his birth and relearning Farsi. He was also reuniting with his mother, Mahri. He’d seen her only once in 30 years, meeting in the Netherlands on a trip with one of his youth teams.
“It was almost like I was drowning in every emotion you could imagine,” he said. “When the plane landed in Tehran, the emotions were already building. Then when I walked out and I saw her, it was incredible.”
Winning helped, too. It had been six seasons since Persepolis won the league, and Ghotbi promised fans that the losing streak would end. Persepolis started the campaign with a 16-game unbeaten streak, and fans took to calling Ghotbi “Afshin the Emperor.” The nickname made him uneasy, however, given his US upbringing and the fact that Persepolis was run by the government’s Physical Education Organization (now the Ministry of Sport and Youth).
As the season wound down, Ghotbi repeated his pledge to win the title, and it took a Hollywood ending. Trailing first-place Sepahan by two points with one game to play, Persepolis hosted the league leaders on the final match day. The game was tied 1-1, in the sixth minute of second-half stoppage time, when Sepehr Heidari’s header saw Persepolis grab the title. “That was a goal from above, a miracle,” said Ghotbi.
With Iran in danger of missing out on the 2010 World Cup, Iran’s football federation turned to Ghotbi, who was brought in for the last three games of qualifying, two of which were on the road. Again, it came down to an all-or-nothing showdown on the final match day, this time against South Korea. While Masud Shojai put Iran ahead in the 52nd minute, South Korea’s Park Ji-Sung equalized with nine minutes remaining. The World Cup dream was over.
Ghotbi has had five different managerial stints since then—including time in Japan and Thailand—and regaining that golden touch has been elusive—until last month, when he led Shijiazhuang to first place.
But the US still holds plenty of allure for Ghotbi and there are five managerial jobs in MLS either vacant or occupied by interim coaches.
“I would love my next move to be to the US,” he said last summer. “I think sometimes when I see [the MLS], I don’t see the passion I want to see. I don’t see the commitment I want to see.
“That’s why, for example, when you see the US women’s football, you really see that and that’s why so many people love this women’s team.”
Ghotbi’s career record as a coach is 163 wins, 88 draws and 96 losses—for a winning percentage of 47.0 percent