With Yahya GolMohammadi’s declining, the Football federation officials face a serious problem in appointing a head coach for the Omid Olympic team.
At the moment, there is no coach who is willing to take over from Kranjcar for the next major challenge of Omid Team.
Indeed, it’s safe to say that the FFIRI has run out of Options. There is also no hope for solution coming from the Olympic Committee. After the departure of Zlatko Krancjar, Mehdi Taj talked about replacing the Croat with a local talent and choosing an Iranian coach to lead the team of Olympics hopefuls. Hamid Estili’s main responsibility was to pick the right person for the difficult task, however one candidate after another declined the offer by the FFIRI.
The latest name that turned down the job is Mehdi MahdaviKia, who has already received his ‘A’ coaching License from UEFA after the completion of the coaching course and has instead decided to go on vacation with his family.
Mahdavikia, who has experience working with young footballers in his own academy as well as the Hamburg base teams and is popular with the general public, could be a good option, but he also rejected the federation’s proposal.
Mahdavikia, a household name in his own right and in response to Estili, did not believe that the current environment in Iran’s football to be accommodating and supportive to his appointment.
On the other hand, Yahya Golmohammadi and Amir Ghalenoei the two heavy weight candidates who coach in league title contenders clubs , did not fancy what would look like a downgrade to coach Omid team.
The pre-mature news of Yahya Golmohammadi’s announcement was not a clever move by the federation, as the coach has already agreed terms for a two years extension with improved pay with his club.
In this situation, some members of the technical committee of the federation, proposed to Hamid Estili to take over the job himself, but Estili does not want to do anything at all with coaching the team, preferring that a competent coach takes over the task.
In desperation, Mehdi Taj and Hamid Estili, the Team manager, may well be forced into looking at lower tier names and not so successful Iranian coaches to take over the Omid Team Job. A practice that has proved disastrous not so long ago.
It was said that there are now some options to guide Omid team, which might not be acceptable to the fans and critics. Some of those caches have not fared well in their clubs and are not exactly too popular either.
It is feared that the final selection of a coach will be a disappointment with forced selection of weaker options. Omid Team barely made it to the finals in Thailand under Kranjcar who is a veteran coach with lots of international exposure. Anything less than him will mean a certain failure for Iran U-23 team to reach the Olympics for the first time in over four decades.