Afshin Ghotbi

Afshin Ghotbi is one of football's great globe-trotters, and his journey from Tehran to UCLA to dugouts across Asia is genuinely inspiring. He was on the South Korean staff during that magical 2002 World Cup run to the semifinals, then went on to coach Iran's national team and clubs in Iran, Japan, Thailand and China. I find managers like him fascinating because they have to absorb wildly different football cultures and somehow make them cohere. His stint at Shimizu S-Pulse showed real tactical adaptability. He's a connector of footballing worlds, and that kind of cross-cultural fluency is rarer and more valuable than people realize.

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Afshin Ghotbi is an Iranian football manager and former player born on February 8, 1964, in Tehran, Iran. A graduate of UCLA, he built an international coaching career across Asia, serving as head coach of the Iran national team and managing clubs including Persepolis, Shimizu S-Pulse in Japan's J.League, Buriram United and Shijiazhuang Ever Bright. He was also part of the South Korea coaching staff at the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Name (English)

Afshin Ghotbi

Name (Japanese)

アフシン・ゴトビ

Reading

あふしん・ごとび

Born

February 8, 1964 (age 62)

Origin

Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran

Occupation

Football player / Football manager

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Dragon

University

University of California, Los Angeles

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshin%20Ghotbi
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%95%E3%82%B7%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B4%E3%83%88%E3%83%93
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1141503

Tags

• From Tehran Province
• Football player
• Football manager

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.