BELEK, Turkey — Anoush Dastgir may be the hardest-working man in soccer, but by Saturday, his job had taken a toll.
Dastgir, the coach of Afghanistan’s men’s national team, was sitting in an empty restaurant at the hotel where he and his team were preparing for an exhibition match against Indonesia. It was 11 p.m., and Dastgir was battling what sounded like a heavy cold. Which wasn’t surprising, given he now had a dozen jobs to do.
Coaching a national soccer team is tough enough anywhere, but coaching Afghanistan has long had unique challenges.
It is one of the world’s poorest countries and a place where civil war and Taliban rule once kept the national team from playing a game for almost two decades.