It was a long journey for Amir Ghalenoei to return to Iran’s bench after his sacking in 2007 following Team Melli’s elimination from the AFC Asian Cup’s quarter final at the hands of South Korea.
In all of these years Ghalenoei has insisted that his sacking was unfair and pointed to the completely different reactions of media to Carlos Queiroz who got same result at 2015 Asian Cup.
Now he has returned to his beloved job as a more experienced manager but his detractors, just like 16 years ago, think his football philosophy nor his character are proper for the national team. But it’s not the first time that Amir Ghalenoei will try to prove his enemies wrong.
Arguably the most controversial figure in Iranian football in the last two decades, Ghalenoei has always lived on the top of a volcano during his career but it might be his last chance to demonstrate which of his nicknames is more relevant: The General or The Boss of Mafia.
The General
When Ghalenoei hung up his boots after nine years at Esteghlal, he was a true legend of the club and his nickname, The General, showed his importance to the team. The diminutive and intelligent playmaker had played for Qatari club Al-Sadd in the mid-1980s and after returning to Iran, played only for Esteghlal. A bitter clash with Persepolis talisman Mojtaba Moharrami in the Tehran derby cemented his status as die hard blue.
But it was his first experience as a coach that defined his managerial career. He was appointed as assistant of Naser Hedjazi, the legendary goalkeeper of both the Iran national team and Esteghlal.
They were completely different characters and soon led to a bitter separation. Hedjazi publicly claimeda clash between Ghalenoei and another assistant forced him to sack both of them, but their divide was deeper. It was actually clash of social classes. Hedjazi always tried to show his opposition with the Islamic Republic and in private chats, refusing to hold Ayatollah Khomeini’s picture in a Tehran derbies was one of his honors, while Ghalenoei’s gestures and words had always been pro-administration.
However, Ghalenoei always tried to ease the enmity and even claimed it was his suggestion that convinced his club’s president to appoint Hedjazi.
However, this wound never healed before Hedjazi death in 2011 and divided Esteghlal fans into supporters of Hedjazi and devotees of Ghalenoei.
Esteghlal qualified for the AFC Asian Club Championship twice under Hedjazi, but he was sacked in 1999 following disappointing results in domestic league.
Meantime Ghalenoei needed more time and experience before sitting on the Esteghlal bench as the number one. He claimed that he attended a coaching course at Bayer Leverkusen in those years and had lots of memories with Leverkusen’s then-manager Christoph Daum, but nobody believes it because he doesn’t know any foreign languages.
However his managerial career started brilliantly. A short stint at Shiraz old club Bargh was followed by working at Esteghlal Ahwaz, who he helped to avoid relegation.
Then in one of the worst seasons in Esteghlal’s history, he was appointed as interim manager and won the Hazfi Cup (Iran’s FA Cup). Despite this, Esteghlal directors thought the time wasn’t right for “Ardeshir” (Ghalenoei’s second name) to be Esteghlal’s permanent manager, so he returned to Esteghlal Ahwaz.
But turbulent season under German manager Roland Koch paved the way for his return. The General enters.
The Boss of Mafia
In October 2019, Ghalenoei faced Persepolis as Sepahan’s manager. It was his second spell at the Isfahan club, and came four years after leaving Esteghlal, but Persepolis fans still saw him as their biggest enemy so they chanted: ”who is the boss of Mafia?/he is Amir Ghalenoei” and his reaction was considerable.
He hit to his chest to confirm that ‘Yes, I am‘ and when a journalist asked him: “Why did the fans chant this against you?” he replied: ”because I’m a bad guy!”
Actually it was something many thought about him for years. He won the domestic league five times (three with Esteghlal and two with Sepahan), but always there were controversial matches which led many to delve into conspiracies of match fixing. Of course none of them were ever proven, but they shaped Ghalenoei’s career and status.
In addition, his relationship with journalists has been always hostile. Once he asked one of his friends to throw a journalist out of press conference and in another case, he described the journalist who wrote against him as a “bastard”.
Nevertheless Ghalenoei, on and off the pitch, tried to amend his image in recent years.
For years he was criticized for his teams’ out-of-date performances, so he acquired some new faces in his technical staff, including coaches from Portugal and tried to update his tactical plans.
Off the pitch, he became more vocal against social problems to distance himself from the administration. In a stormy interview after his side, Gol Gohar-e-Sirjan’s elimination from Hazfi Cup against Esteghlal, he said: ”In this country in the past 40 years, we just saw cruelty and injustice, and the example is our football.”
Later he tried to justify his comment and insisted he just talked about football, not other issues of the country. A predictable retreat.
So when the Iran Football Federation decided to relieve Rahman Rezaei, a former defender for Perugia and Ghalenoei’s assistant, just days after their appointment, for his Instagram post in support of recent protests, Ghaleoei preferred to remain silent. Predictable again.
Note: Rahman Rezaei later claimed his Instagram was hacked and he didn’t published that post.
He has finally again reached the role that he has been waiting for for years, so of course doesn’t want to lose it easily. He is the manager who achieved 1000 points in the Iran league, a tally of which he is so incredibly proud, even keeping it as his last Instagram post. He considers himself as the best option after three foreign managers in the last 12 years.
But again he has little time to prove it. Fourteen months after Iran’s weird campaign at 2022 World Cup, that saw some fans jeer the team, Ghalenoei will lead his side to Doha to win Iran first trophy in more than four decades and any result, good or bad, will cast a shadow on the remainder of his tenure as Iran coach.
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