When the Supreme Leader Canned Foreign Coaches

This article is part of a 22-part miniseries on the history and stars of Iranian football released ahead of Iran's participation in Group B of the 2022 Qatar World Cup in November. You can explore the rest of the series here.

From the early 2010s onward the nature of Iranian football was changing, in no small part thanks to the influence of well-known European football coaches drafted in by some of the country’s top teams. Iranian football players, who were usually transferred to Qatar, Oman, Turkey and even Thailand between 2006 and 2010, began receiving invitations from European football club teams again.

But one speech from the highest political official in the Islamic Republic of Iran almost put paid to that. An important thing for foreigners to understand about Iran is that the state is highly resistant to organic change; it is extremely wary of development it itself did not initiate, and also adopts a hyper-protectionist stance.

In August 2019, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader and embodiment of the regime’s principles today, was due to attend a meeting with young medallists who had just cleaned up in the World Science Olympiads, as well as members of the national volleyball team. He decided at the eleventh hour that Iranian – only Iranian – football coaches ought to attend as well.

In his inevitable speech, Khamenei praised the performance of – Iranian – head coach of the volleyball team. He then said pointedly: "I have always believed in Iranian head coaches and I really believe that an Iranian coach is worthy of our country, the Iranian clubs and teams.”

He added: “Of course, I will not interfere. But there is no need for the presence of a foreign coach. Some foreign coaches are good; some are not good. They get a lot of money, they expect a lot, sometimes they don't even do the job. Some people feel that they are necessary and are out to prove that. I am not convinced that they are necessary, no." He repeated again: "Of course, I will not interfere, but there is no need.”

This characteristically rambling statement, though framed as an opinion, disguised a direct order. Almost immediately after the event, large numbers of the foreign coaches invited to Iran in recent years began to leave.

Branko Ivanković had packed his suitcase even before the statement. But Gabriel Calderon, the then-head coach of Persepolis, was forced out; spurred on by the Supreme Leader’s words, the club’s extremist CEO Mohammad Hassan Ansarifard – a former intelligence operative – made a series of shock moral allegations against him.

Andrea Stramaccioni, the head coach of Esteghlal, who had always had a mixed reception from fans in any case, also left Iran shortly afterward. Tractor club, which had had no fewer than five European coaches including the legendary Georges Leekens over the past seven years, abstained from hiring any more foreigners for two.

For a brief period in 2018 and during the 18th season of the Iran/Persian Gulf Pro League, all of Iran’s top teams had been overseen by coaches whose backgrounds at other clubs eclipsed them. A year after Khamenei’s speech they were all gone, and on the other side of the pandemic in 2021, the quality of football in the Pro League had visibly decline: the average never exceeded three goals per match in any week, and sometimes less than two. Clubs found themselves having to choose between the same Iranian-born coaches they knew had failed in the past.

In 2022, as Khamenei had not brought up the subject again, a few clubs began to look outward once more. Esteghlal brought in the Portuguese coach Ricardo Sá Pinto, while his compatriot Jose Morais took up the same role at Sepahan. Kurban Berdyev, a Russian national, took over as head coach of Tractor. Thirteen other Pro League clubs are still led by Iranian coaches, just as the Supreme Leader wanted.