Carlos Queiroz had a pretty good idea what he was signing up for in September when he agreed to return to his previous role as coach of the Iran national team, three years after ending his initial eight-year stint in charge, on a $50,000 contract for three months' work culminating at the World Cup. Or at least he thought he did.
Pitched into a politically sensitive group in Qatar alongside the United States, England and Wales -- Iranian relations with the U.S. and United Kingdom have rarely been anything other than hostile since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 -- Queiroz would need to be both football coach and diplomat to ensure that Iran's World Cup campaign passed off as smoothly as possible.