Coach takes over Iranian team

GLENDALE — Afshin Ghotbi is a well-known name for many soccer players from the area.

For more than a decade, the coach ran the American Global Soccer School out of Burbank’s Woodbury University.

Recently, Ghotbi definitely stepped up in the international soccer ranks.

Last month, Ghotbi — a Glendale High graduate — was named coach of the Iranian national team by the Iranian Football Federation.

It is the first-ever head coaching position at the national level for Ghotbi, who becomes the third coach within a month for an embattled Iran program looking to move in a new direction while pursuing a long-shot bid for a 2010 World Cup berth.

A native of Shiraz, Iran, Ghotbi, 45, emigrated from Tehran to Glendale at the age of 13. He recently returned to Iran in 2007 to coach Persepolis FC, which he led to the Iran Pro League championship in May.

Ghotbi’s name had previously been connected with the Iranian national team coaching vacancy both before the appointment of Ali Daei in March 2008 and when Daei was dismissed shortly after a March 28 loss to Saudi Arabia in a 2010 World Cup qualifier match.

But Ghotbi was again passed over for the position in favor of Mohammad Mayeli Kohan. Having resigned his Persepolis FC post in November, Ghotbi was finally tabbed for the job when Mayeli Kohan resigned after just weeks on the job.

“He brings a fresh outlook on soccer,” said Ghotbi’s longtime friend and former soccer coach at Glendale High, Cherif Zein, who has over 35 years of experience developing players at the club level and currently heads the La Cañada-based Cherif Soccer Foundation. “He tries to coach with the newest innovation, new drills, new movement. You don’t do old stuff.”

Ghotbi played soccer for four years at Glendale High and then at UCLA before returning to Zein’s side and beginning a movement to establish year-round soccer clubs that current local coaches credit with laying the groundwork for the network of club programs that now thrives throughout the area.

“He was always working for me in my summer camps and he wanted to expand the training,” Zein said. “I told him, ‘You’re crazy, they’ll never let us,’ because at that time soccer was [a] minimal [presence].

“He said, ‘No, I want to train all year long.’ So he had a great vision at a young age of what soccer was going be like.”

Ghotbi began coaching at La Cañada High and was involved with numerous soccer clubs and schools including the Foothill Flyers, as well as starting his own training program, the Afshin Ghotbi Soccer School, also known as American Global Soccer School.

Ghotbi’s impressive professional coaching resume includes stints as chief scout for the United States national team from 1997-98, football analyst for the South Korean national team from 2000-02 and a one-year run as an assistant coach for the L.A. Galaxy before returning to South Korea as an assistant from 2004-07.

Ghotbi is renowned for his tactical prowess and use of computer software in scouting and preparation, which helped him make a name for himself at the national level.

“He had this computer where he would analyze all the games,” said former Burbank High assistant girls’ coach and current La Salle Coach Edgar Manvelyan, who met Ghotbi at a training session in the mid-90s and has followed his friend’s career since. “That’s how he started out.”

Ghotbi coached against Iran as a member of both the U.S. and Korean national team coaching staffs and has long been a fan favorite in his home country.

“When he got the job at Persepolis, he did a very good job, so that’s why the people love him,” Manvelyan said. “The players loved him and he motivates players a lot.”

Ghotbi’s first match coaching with Iran was against North Korea on June 6. The team tied the match, 0-0, making qualifying for the World Cup much more difficult.

“It’s a lot of pressure on him,” Zein said, “[If the team can do well], the whole country will back him up.”