Iran national team coach Carlos Queiroz resigns again

Iran national team coach Carlos Queiroz resigns again. January. 09, 2017 07:05. by Jong-Seok Lee wing@donga.com.

Iran national football team coach Carlos Queiroz (photo) expressed his resignation again. He led the Iranian team assigned in the Group A along with South Korea vying for the final Asian qualifiers for the 2018 Russia World Cup. According to Iranian local media including “Barjess” on Sunday, Queiroz conveyed his will to step down from his position to the Iranian Football Association on Saturday. Reasons behind his repeated resignation were allegedly told that there were conflicts with club teams over the recruitment of national team players.

Queiroz opened a training camp in the United Arab Emirates last Monday for the upcoming two consecutive rounds of qualifying matches for the Russia World Cup with Qatar and China in March, mostly consisting of Iran Persian Gulf League players. However, Branko Ivankovic, head coach of leading Iranian club Persepolis, provoked a quarrel, saying that Queiroz never considered the club teams that are in a hurry to prepare for the Asian Football Confederations (AFC) Championship League held in February, and are raking up players just for the sake of the final qualifying matches for the World Cup, which are still over two months left. Angered by the complaint, Queiroz sent back seven Persepolis players among the convened players. As a result, a friendly match with Morocco on Friday was canceled.

Still, this is not the first time Queiroz decided to quit his coach position. Back in 2014 when Iran lost its FIFA World Cup qualifier football match, Queiroz told that the national team failed to come up with a good result due to the lack of support from the Iranian Football Association, and therefore he would leave the team. However, he extended his contract with the Iran National Team soon after his statement. Also in March 2015, he expressed his resignation after going through a dispute over selecting the players with the football association, only to return to his position after a month. Considering his past traits, no one knows for sure whether Queiroz will really quit this time. Maybe his statement comes a warning after the tug of war with the club teams over recruiting players.

Leading the Iranian national team since 2011, Queiroz has been provoking Korean soccer fans with numerous misbehaviors. In the final qualifying match with Korea held in Ulsan in June 2013, he raged Korean fans by swearing with his fist to the then-Korean coach Choi Kang-hee. What’s more, he wore a t-shirt with a composite photo of Choi wearing an Uzbekistan uniform.

As of Sunday, Group A teams finished half of their entire final matches, with Iran ranked at the top and Korea following the lead at the second position.