Carlos Queiroz had a pretty good idea what he was signing up for in September when he agreed to return to his previous role as coach of the Iran national team, three years after ending his initial eight-year stint in charge, on a $50,000 contract for three months’ work culminating at the World Cup. Or at least he thought he did.
Pitched into a politically sensitive group in Qatar alongside the United States, England and Wales — Iranian relations with the U.S. and United Kingdom have rarely been anything other than hostile since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 — Queiroz would need to be both football coach and diplomat to ensure that Iran’s World Cup campaign passed off as smoothly as possible.
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But within days of him returning to Iran, protests against the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested for failing to wear her headscarf properly, began to escalate and engulf the country.
Almost two months on, the situation remains volatile. Women continue to protest against the regime by cutting their hair and refusing to wear headscarves, with Iranian footballers, past and present, joining the protests on social media with posts that support the demands for greater rights for women and society.
Outside of Iran, calls for Team Melli — Iran’s nickname for their national team — to be kicked out of the World Cup have been voiced by Ukraine because of claims that the country is supplying military hardware to Russia in order to support its invasion of Ukraine.
As national team coach, Queiroz is the leading figure of Iranian football, but the former Real Madrid coach and Sir Alex Ferguson’s longtime assistant at Manchester United has chosen to avoid the subject that is now consuming Iran. When asked during a training camp in Tehran last week about the ongoing protests and unrest in the…
