Iran national football coach Carlos Queiroz praised his team's performance in their loss to Spain and blamed the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) for denying the Asian side a draw.
"For me, VAR comes a little late and it's a shame it hadn't arrived in South Africa to disallow (David) Villa's goal against Portugal," he said, recalling the match that saw Spain eliminate the Portuguese from the 2010 World Cup, reports Efe.
Queiroz was then the national coach for his native Portugal.
"When (Spain) scored from an offside position there was no VAR and when we do it, there is," he said, referring to the decision to disallow what would have been the tying goal for Iran in Wednesday's match.
At the same time, Queiroz said that Spain were worthy World Cup champions in 2010, and he endorsed VAR as "good for the credibility of soccer."
Despite the loss, Iran remain in the fight to advance from Group B. Spain and Portugal are tied for the lead with 4 points each, followed by the Iranians with three.
"If you think of it like tennis, we had one match point today and we will have another against Portugal. Everything is still open. We are still alive and still dreaming," Queiroz said.
"We showed that we were ready to suffer and ready to compete. I felt we deserved a better result," he said of Wednesday's contest. "There's no doubt Spain play wonderful, stylish football but I thought we deserved more for the way we played."
"But congratulations to Fernando Hierro and Spain. We will learn a lot from this game," the Iran coach added.
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