AL-RAYYAN, Qatar – A savvy, charismatic, multi-national polyglot with a fascination for the particularities of the American spirit: One could make the case that Carlos Queiroz was American soccer’s Jurgen Klinsmann before Jurgen Klinsmann was.While Klinsmann has been a constant presence in the nation’s footballing consciousness for more than a decade thanks to his television commentary work and time in charge of the U.S. men’s national team that followed, the Portuguese manager was a quietly influential figure on the domestic scene before the turn of the century.Though he would become a globetrotting coach with an array of high-powered destinations on his resume, Queiroz maintained U.S. ties through a network of colleagues and relationships that stretches from New York to Chicago to Manchester to Tehran and, eventually, to Doha today.Here he leads Iran into a massive World Cup match with the USMNT on Tuesday, with Group B’s results pitting the longtime geopolitical antagonists in a zero-sum situation for advancement to the tournament’s knockout stages. The Yanks need a win at Al Thumama Stadium to reach the round of 16, while a draw would be enough to see Team Melli through.In several ways, Queiroz’s ideas served as a sort of Rosetta Stone for the dramatic evolution of the player development pathway that produced so many members of the current USMNT squad. He arrived stateside in the spring of 1996 to take over the coaching duties of the New York/New Jersey MetroStars during Major League Soccer’s inaugural season.He would hold that post for only a matter of months, thanks to a big-money offer from Nagoya Grampus Eight that lured him to Japan. But contacts were made, seeds planted.“I realized immediately the great potential of United States soccer,” Queiroz told Soccer America in 2018. “What I found was the beginning of a huge project to create and help develop soccer in the United States.”Not long after, the U.S. Soccer Federation launched Project 2010, an ambitious big-picture plan to orient multiple levels of the sport towards the pursuit of excellence in time to compete for the trophy at that year’s World Cup.
Federation leaders, mindful of his past role in cultivating Portugal’s “golden generation,” tabbed Queiroz and his friend and colleague Dan Gaspar to provide “an independent look at the landscape here with a third-party point of view,” as Sunil Gulati would later put it.
Its general outline was released just before France 1998, where the USMNT’s woebegone last-place performance delivered a painful reality check.The 113-page “Q report” wasn’t exactly implemented in full. Yet its concepts helped lay the groundwork for innovations like the U.S. Soccer Development Academy youth league, upgraded coaching education structures and a national talent scouting network.
(Read Project 2010 in full HERE)
In fact, the federation was impressed enough that tentative plans were mooted for Queiroz to take over the USMNT after Steve Sampson’s departure, although that never came to pass. He would go on to manage Real Madrid, work alongside Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and lead a diverse list of national teams from Portugal to South Africa.Nowhere did he build a legacy quite like with Iran. He’s led Team Melli at three consecutive World Cups across two stints in charge, and is now just one positive result away from steering them into the knockout stages for the first time ever.
A hard-charging personality who’s said to thrive on four hours of sleep a night, Queiroz has earned the loyalty of fans and players while managing to walk the tightrope required in the treacherous, politicized environment of Iranian sports, a domain government officials often involve themselves in.He’s also drawn headlines for his outspoken defenses of his players, who are under a microscope in Qatar, just across the Persian Gulf from Iran. Huge numbers of supporters on both sides of the political divide are flocking to their matches while the human-rights protests and deadly government reprisals that have roiled their homeland since September loom large.He confronted a BBC journalist for asking striker Mehdi Taremi about the protesters back home, urging her to also query Gareth Southgate about U.S. and British policies towards Afghanistan. And on Saturday he ripped Jurgen Klinsmann in a lengthy Twitter thread after the naturalized Californian said on a BBC show that it was “part of [Iranian] culture” that Queiroz and his players “worked the referee” and engaged in gamesmanship and underhanded play in their emotional win over Wales.Making sure to note Klinsmann’s perceived “German/American” allegiances, Queiroz called his remarks “prejudiced,” “outrageous” and “a disgrace to football” before calling on him to resign from his position on FIFA’s Technical Study Group.Klinsmann responded that his words were “taken completely wrong” and “taken out of context,” suggesting that his past role in charge of the USMNT had led Iranians to see him as a provocateur and pledging to get in touch with Queiroz and “calm things down.” The subsequent controversy over U.S. Soccer’s use of an altered Iran flag with the symbols of its hardline Islamic government removed has only roiled the waters further.“It is unique. It is something different,” said U.S. defender Tim Ream on Sunday in a tense press conference attended by media from both nations. “But at the same time, we’re all human, we understand that there are things going on that are out of our control. And so that’s where we find ourselves. Again, we understand and empathize with the Iranian people. And at the end of the day, we are still having to focus on what is our job.”It all shapes Tuesday into a metaphorical powder keg, as well as an on-field scenario that favors Queiroz, known for his organized, defensively resilient tactics. If the Yanks are unable to dig out the victory they require to reach the round of 16, they’ll have been undone by an adversary who knows them and their soccer culture just about as well as any opposing manager could.
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