Farhad Majidi, the Omid Team (Iran U-23) has resigned his post following a series of disputes with the FFIRI management that has led to moves to dismiss him from his post.

Majidi, whose appointment in place of the broadly experienced  Zlatko Kranjcar has raised more than a few eyebrows, has been promising that he will take Iran to the Olympics for the first time since 1976. However, a series of bad result, extensive media criticism, disapproval from senior coaches and former players, differences between him and the Omid Team Manager Hamid Estili and player’s discontent with his training methods, forced the rookie coach to resign before the federation shows him the door.

With no more than a few games as a caretaker coach of Esteghlal in his resume, the FFIRI in a moment of madness decided to give this mammoth task of qualifying for the Olympics Games to Majidi. While much more notable and experienced Iranian coaches turned down the job of coaching Omid Team, Farhad Majidi who was away from football after he hanged his boot, found it a golden opportunity to progress his own career in coaching without considering the complication and the difficulties of the task up ahead and without seriously addressing his own level of limited experience in coaching.

There were only two persons in the whole world that believed in Majidi’s ability to deliver, one of them is the person who approved his appointment and that would be Mehdi Taj and Farhad himself. The rest thought otherwise.

The mammoth task of qualifying to Tokyo 2020 Olympics became nearly impossible when Iran was grouped with defending Champions of the last two editions of the U-23 Asian championships, Uzbekistan and South Korea while China, a contender in their own rights, complete the group.

With Majidi gone, it is assumed that Omid Namazi will take the post on a temporary basis or continue all the way to the AFC Asian U23 Championship in Thailand in January 2020. That championship will also be the qualifier for the Tokyo Olympics Games 2020 football competition. The top three teams will qualify.

Namazi has good experience with age level teams and has been coaching United States U18 and U20 teams in addition to several other clubs in the states and Iran.

He was recently appointed to Omid Team as an assistant to Farhad Majidi in a face-saving exercise by the federation after soon realizing that their gamble with Rookie Majidi s not working.  Omid Namazi also worked as an assistant to Carlos Queiroz in Team Melli.