Carlos Quieroz and the Iran curse

Day -2 WorldCup2018

Two days. I'm so excited, I've barely got anything left to say.

I went through all the host cities in Russia that I didn't know about. It was my personal geography lesson and I hope you learned something too. But I am not going to carry on because I do know Sochi, Moscow and St Petersburg. Ekaterinburg, Kaliningrad and Samara were more fascinating. I almost went to Sochi about 30 years ago and it did host the Winter Olympics 4 years ago so it was definitely on my radar.

So instead I'll move on to a story, and a team and a coach, who I wrote about a lot pre-Brazil 2014. I'm back to Iran and Carlos Quieroz. I used to say "poor Carlos Quieroz" but I think he's done pretty well for himself. Four years ago he was threatening to quit, repeatedly, because of the lack of support from the Iranian federation.

A training camp was cancelled because not enough players were available and players were told they would not be allowed to swap shirts after World Cup matches because the team could only afford one shirt each. The players would be doing laundry after every match.

Fast forward four years and Quieroz has led his team to a World Cup again, despite the odds seemingly stacked against him. But the bad luck, if that's what it is, has struck again. In April a friendly against Syria was cancelled because a lot of the national team players were involved in the Asian Champions League with their clubs. At the end of May a friendly against Greece, due to be played in Turkey, was cancelled by the Greeks because of an ongoing dispute between Greece and Turkey. A hastily arranged replacement match with Kosovo was also cancelled because, "New last minute demands presented by Kosovo Football Federation came to make the accomplishment of the game totally impossible." (An Iranian Football Federation statement).

They did get one friendly in, and a 1-0 win, on June 8th against Lithuania.

And it's not over. Today Nike announced that they will not, or cannot, supply the Iranian team with football boots for the World Cup because of US sanctions against Iran. On a political level it seems pretty straightforward. Nike are an American company and American sanctions prevent them from doing business in Iran. But the Iranians are understandably miffed and angry. Quieroz says his players cannot be expected to get used to new boots a week before their first match, the federation cannot understand how this wasn't a problem in 2014 (when sanctions were also in place) and normal Iranians are calling for boycott of all things Nike.

Iran play their first match against Morocco which will be a must win for each team if they are to have any hope of making it through their group which also includes Spain and Portugal. A hard done by story like this might give neutrals a team to root for, as an alternative to Iceland.