Sport Management: Challenges in the Management of Football in the Case of Iran

ABSTRACT: Traditional management in football is the main problem of football in Iran which prevents growth. The traditional managers of football do not have updated knowledge to manage professional football of Iran in modern environment. But today’s world is the world of changes in the moment. Resistance against changes do not have any results unless failure, whereas, the nature of traditional management is strange with these changes. Traditional managers sometimes scarify the advantages of clubs and national benefits for their gaining. This is the clear issue that is visible in the Football of Iran. The weaknesses of management in clubs can be one of the reasons of backwardness in Iran’s national football in the world. So, by applying modern management in the level of clubs can dramatically help the national team of a country. The clubs should employ the available management potential and should use updated and intelligent managers in order to direct the teams and consequently the national team of Iran to the high ranks. The problem which is the reason of this study is the backwardness of Iran’s football. The hypothesis for this problem is the weakness in the management of clubs. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the management of clubs to know if their managers are familiar with modern football and effective factors of modern management in football. In addition, it is aimed to find out whether the weaknesses of football in Iran are because of weak and traditional management of football at the level of clubs. To reach above-mentioned aims the management of Damash-e-Guilan Football Club (Damash FC) has been investigated which can be a good representative of clubs in the Premier League of Iran (Khalij-e-fars League). The applied method in this study consists of combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. After literature review, study has been carried on by focusing on the case of Damash FC. At first, in the case study, information about the history of both football in Iran and Damash FC have been gathered. In the next step, the interview with the managers of Damash has been held and the questionnaires have been distributed between people who are related with football. It is concluded that because of lacks in infrastructures and hardware, it is difficult and in some case impossible to pass traditional management toward modern management. Keywords: Traditional Football, Modern Football, Football in Iran, Damash FC. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………