Football Federation Chief: We Will Try To Keep Quiroz As Head Coach

Sao Paulo, June 24, IRNA – Head of Iranian Football Federation (IFF) said here Monday Iran’s top priority for national football team head coach in Asian Football Cup and next World Cup is Carlos Quiroz, but IFF cannot all alone meet his demands. “We had arranged with Quiroz at least till the 2015 Asian Football Cup, but he had two major demands that the IFF cannot all by itself meet,” said Ali Kaffashian in an interview. Pointing out that both the Iranian nation and the country’s sports officials wish to keep Quiroz as the national football team’s head coach, Kaffashian said that one of the demands of the Portuguese head coach is financial and the other one is related to the professional facilities and the federation cannot all on itself meet any of those demands, unless the government would assist the IFF. He reiterated that if the government would support the federation Iran will keep Carlos Quiroz, reiterating that extending his contract for a short period would neither be professional nor right as Iran needs to keep him in the service of the team at least for four years to be able to achieve satisfactory results in 2008 World Cup. On the news on signing of a contract between Mr. Quiroz and South Africa, Kaffashian said that those are rumors, as his top option, too, is Iran, but we need to provide for the terms and conditions that he has for staying. He reiterated that the IFF’s top choice, too, is Quiroz as he is better than the other foreign options for us, but stressed that his demands are too professional and too much for the IFF to be able to provide all by itself, unless it is assisted by the government. On the national football team’s match versus Bosnian-Herzegovina, Kaffashian said that the team’s players did all their best during the first two games and created pride for the nation expressing hope that by raising to the 1/8th final phase of the World Cup they would complete their prides in these games. That is while the Iranian national football team’s Head Coach Carlos Quiroz, too, had announced on Monday that he felt proud of working with the Iranian team, arguing that certain people had created obstacles in the way of continuing his work in that capacity. The IFF contract with Quiroz will end at the end of the 2014 Brazil World Cup, but following the good performance of the Iranian national football team in the first two matches of the World Cup games versus Nigeria and Argentina both the Iranian nation and the IFF are eager to extend his contract at least till the 2015 FIFA Asian Football Cup./end