There are only five games remaining in the 34-game season and the fans in the city of Shizuoka in the shadow of Mount Fuji cheer for what they hope will be the club’s best performance ever.
Qotbi went to Japan after a sour experience coaching the national team in Iran.
Qotbi’s soccer career began on the opposite shore of the Pacific, in California. When he was 13, he left Tehran to move to the United States. Tehran was passionate for soccer, but Los Angeles provided an education in the sport.
“Living in Southern California exposed me to many football cultures,” Qotbi told Sports Illustrated magazine in a recent interview. “I had coaches and teammates from every corner of the world. As a teenager, I was lucky to live 15 minutes from the Rose Bowl, and I saw the greatest players in the world play in the NASL [the now-defunct North American Soccer League] — Pele, Beckenbauer, Cruyff and more.”
Qotbi worked in college and professional soccer in the United States. He was part of the coaching staff for the South Korea national team.
His first professional job as a head coach took him back to Iran in 2007 for the first time in 30 years where he was carried out of Mehrabad airport on the shoulders of hundreds of Persepolis fans. Over 100,000 were celebrating eight months later as the Reds won the title in the 96th minute in the last game of an emotionally-draining season.
That triumph got him the national team coaching job a few months later after Ali Daei was fired after five games of the final round of qualification for the 2010 World Cup.
Qotbi couldn’t turn it around and failure to win in front of 80,000 North Korean fans in Pyongyang and 66,000 in Seoul ended dreams of making the World Cup finals in South Africa
But to go back to Los Angeles…. The demise of the NASL in 1984 meant that after Glendale High and then UCLA few playing paths were open for Qotbi. That led him into coaching.
“While playing at UCLA for the men’s team,” he told Sports Illustrated, “I had an opportunity to be the head coach of the women’s soccer team. Teaching women about the game taught me much about the importance of group dynamics, communication and people management…. Coaching became a more attractive option for me.”
At UCLA, he met Steve Sampson. When Sampson later coached the US national team to the 1998 World Cup, he asked Qotbi, then 34, to go with him to scout the other teams in the group, of which one was Iran. Given the relationship between the two nations, it was a clash that transcended sport.
Qotbi said he was trying to deal with this unique situation. After 21 years away, he still hadn’t set foot back on Persian soil. “It was a case of mixed emotions,” he said. “The passion of the Iranian team and fans made me feel close to my roots, but I had a duty to my profession and the job I was employed to do and that made sure I was focused on the football.” Iran won 2-1—its only victory in any game in any World Cup finals.
In December 2000, Qotbi got a call from Guus Hiddink. The Dutchman wanted a video analyst for the South Korea national team and hired Qotbi for an 18-month campaign that ended with a semifinal defeat at the 2002 World Cup at the hands of Germany in Seoul.
A few days earlier, South Korea played the USA to a 1-1 tie. Qotbi remembers it well. “The US team had players I worked with, including John O’Brien, that made it difficult for me. Once again though, I found that the only way one can get through these games is to channel all emotions toward the professional commitment to the team you are working for.”
The South Korean stint provided Qotbi with a permanent link to that country, however, as he met and married a South Korean woman.
Qotbi returned to Korea to assist coach Dick Advocaat in time for the 2006 World Cup and was number two to Pim Verbeek at the 2007 Asian Cup — when Korea defeated Iran in the quarterfinal after a penalty shootout.
During the qualification round for that tournament, he had been denied a visa to return to Iran with the Korean team, but in August 2007, he was back and meeting his mother for the first time in 30 years after accepting the offer to coach Persepolis.
Qotbi was popular with the fans for being professional, open with the media and humble in defeat and victory. “He was less liked by some of the old guard in soccer,” Sports Illustrated relates. “There were those who had little for a coach who had left the country for America only to return and be labeled ‘Afshin the Emperor’ by fans before the season had even started. It was a roller-coaster campaign that included political infighting, problems with players and a six-point deduction handed down by FIFA, but it ended with a dramatic last-minute title win.”
Not long after those celebrations died down, he took over the national team. In January 2011, after a quarterfinal defeat at the hands of South Korea ended Iran’s Asian Cup hopes, Qotbi headed to Japan.
Shimizu S-Pulse had ended the previous three seasons in 5th, 7th and 6th place. It had never won a championship. In Qotbi’s first season last year, Shimizu slipped to 10th place. But this year, it has ranked as high as second, was in fourth place last week and slipped to fifth this week with five games remaining.
It is tied at 45 points with fourth place Keshiwa Reysal and sixth place Nagoya Grampus Eight. Qotbi has no realistic chance at first or second place, where both teams have 54 points. But third place Urawa Red Diamonds with 48 points could be displaced—and that’s what the S-Pulse fans are rooting for.
Qotbi told Sports Illustrated, “We can’t compete financially with some of traditionally bigger clubs in Japan, so we have developed a long-term strategy using young players to build a successful club both on and off the pitch.
“Our players are growing with each training session and fixture and we are definitely a contender.”
The team plays its home games in a tiny 20,000-seat stadium. Its strange name includes S for Shimizu city and Shizuoka prefecture. The word pulse is English, referring to fan enthusiasm. But that word can’t be pronounced by Japanese speakers and the team is known locally as “Esuparusu.”