Tehran confirms: Hiring of new national football team coach delayed

Jan 3, 2008, 1:37 GMT

Tehran - Tehran on Wednesday confirmed earlier press reports that the employment of a new national team coach has been postponed until January 9.

Due to differences with football's ruling body FIFA over governmental interference in football affairs, the Iranian Football Federation (FFI) has had no president since last year and been run by a transitional committee until elections on January 9.

An FFI spokesman told the Khabar news network that an initial arrangement was made last week by the transitional committee with Portuguese coach Artur Jorge and with two foreign assistants and one German-based Iranian assistant coach.

But as the FFI elections would be held next week, the deal should be finalized by the new FFI president and board members, Ali Reqbati said.

Jorge was in Tehran last week and held initial talks with the transitional committee, but the two main candidates for the FFI presidency asked for the deal not to be finalized until after the January 9 elections.

The two main candidates, Ali Kafashian, secretary general of Iran's Olympic Committee, and Shahrokh Shahnazi, head of the country's tennis federation, told ISNA news agency that selecting the new coach should rather be the job of the new FFI president.

After news leaked out that Jorge was the top candidate for the trainer job, the Tehran sports press questioned whether the Portuguese would really be the best choice.

Several dailies argued that Jorge has trained no big team in recent years, suffered more losses than victories during his career and furthermore had heart problems.

The two other options of the FFI were French coach Jacques Santini and German Peter Neururer, but Jorge is said to have demanded much less in salary than the two.

In the first round of the World Cup qualifiers, Iran has to play against Kuwait, Syria and the United Arab Emirates.

Before the qualifiers, Iran will have three friendly games against German club Hansa Rostock and the national teams of Qatar and Mali.