Farrukh Quraishi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Farrukh Quraishi | ||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Farrukh Quraishi | |
| Date of birth | ||
| Place of birth | Tehran, Iran | |
| Playing position | Defender | |
| Club information | ||
| Current club | Retired | |
| Youth clubs | ||
| 1971-1974 | Oneonta State | |
| Senior clubs1 | ||
| Years | Club | App (Gls)* |
| 1975-1980 1981 |
Tampa Bay Rowdies Calgary Boomers |
77 (0) 0 (0) |
|
1 Senior club appearances and goals |
||
Farrukh Quraishi (born in Tehran, Iran) is a retired Iranian-American football player who played for Tampa Bay Rowdies and Calgary Boomers. He usually played as a defender. He also has served in executive positions for numerous U.S. soccer teams and organizations.
[edit] Playing career
Quraishi was born in Iran, but grew up in London, England. In the late 1960s, Fransico Marcos, who later founded the United Soccer Leagues (USL), was an assistant coach at Oneonta State and a fledgling soccer entrepreneur. He had created American International Sports Exchange to coordinate overseas soccer tours for U.S. teams. On one of these trips in 1971, Marcos met Quraishi and convinced him to attend and play soccer at Oneonta State. Over his four years with Oneonta, Quraishi developed into one of the era's best college defenders. He was a member of the 1972 Oneonta team which lost to SIU-E in the NCAA Division II championship game. That year he was selected to the 1972 State University of New York Conference All Conference team, an honor he repeated in 1973 and 1974. Although the team did not advance as far his junior and senior year, he was showered with accolades, being named a first team All American in 1973 and 1974. He capped this when he was named the 1974 Hermann Trophy winner as the best collegiate player in the nation.
In 1975, the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League selected Quraishi with the first overall pick in the NASL college draft. That season, despite being a rookie, Quarishi was named to the NASL All Star team. However, Quraishi remained committed to his education which he had not yet finished and continued to study while playing. In 1976 he graduated from Oneonta with a bachelors degree in sociology.
Quraishi struggled with injuries, including a broken ankle, which had a severe negative impact on his career. While he played 21 games as a rookie, he never again saw that many games in a season. In 1976 he played 15 and in 1977 fourteen games. He lost the entire 1978 season but came back strong in 1979, seeing time in eighteen games. However injuries again reduced his playing time and he entered only nine games in 1980. He then moved to the expansion Calgary Boomers for the 1981 season, but never played a game. At the end of the season, he retired from playing professionally and moved back to Tampa Bay.
[edit] Administrative career
While playing with the Rowdies, Quarishi had also served as the team’s assistant director of community relations. In this capacity he got his first taste of managing and developing a team’s infrastructure. While the players are the natural focus of any sport, these players are supported by owners, executives, managers, salesmen, etc. Quarishi gained valuable exposure to this side of soccer at an early point in his career and it served him well for the rest of his life. As part of his duties in community relations, Quarishi developed soccer leagues and soccer camps throughout the Tampa Bay area. When he returned to Tampa Bay, Caspers Company, a McDonald’s franchise, hired him as its director of public relations. As part of his duties, he placed the McDonald’s name and logo into the public’s awareness through charity and youth events. Among these was the establishment of the McDonald's Sun Bowl International Youth Soccer Tournament. He remained with the company until 1992 when he re-entered the soccer world full time as Orlando, Florida’s venue director for the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
After the World Cup, Quraishi became involved in the establishment of Major League Soccer (MLS). When MLS began developing itself prior to its first season in 1996, Quraishi became part of the process of bringing a franchise to Tampa Bay. When MLS created the Tampa Bay Mutiny, it hired Quraishi as the team’s general manager. However, his time with the Mutiny did not go as well as his other ventures. Despite a successful season, the Mutiny, which was directly owned by the league, was poorly marketed and had one of the lowest average attendances. As a former public relations expert, this reflected poorly on Quraishi. Then, Mark Fortunat, the team’s director of finance, was charged with embezzling $100,000. While Quraishi was not implicated, the league decided that he was poorly managing the franchise and fired him. As a result, Thomas Rongen, the team’s head coach, resigned and moved to the New England Revolution.[1] Despite this disappointment, Quraishi did not leave soccer management, but became a professional sports consultant for two years before moving to Massachusetts in 1998 to join Massachusetts Professional Soccer where he is the current Chief Operating Officer. Quraishi has also worked as a soccer broadcast announcer and is a member of Master Coach International, which analyzes athletes and teams using proprietary software. Finally, he is a co-owner of three minor league soccer teams, the Boston Bulldogs, the Cape Cod Crusaders and the Boston Renegades. In 2004, he joined the USL Owners Advisory Council.
Oneonta State inducted Quraishi into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 1976.
