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.
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
Each day it becomes harder to win
Spanish national football team midfielder Sergio Busquets expressed his satisfaction following his team's victory over Iran (1-0) and said each day it becomes harder to win.
"We know what a World Cup is and we also know that each day it becomes harder to win. For me, Morocco has played two matches much better than its rivals and is now going home," Busquets explained in the Kazan Arena on Wednesday.
The most important thing, especially in the group stage, is to win," he added.
Busquets stressed that the priority is now to defeat Morocco on the last day and try to finish first in Group B.
"Hopefully we can win against Morocco, but it will be much harder because it is a team that plays a lot better ... it has played much better than its rivals in these first two days. I wish we can have a good match and win," he said.
"The priority is to qualify as first in group. If we can make more goals, even better," Busquets added.
Meanwhile, captain Sergio Ramos said that he is satisfied with his squad's 1-0 triumph, adding that they knew the match was going to be a complicated one.
"We knew it was going to be a difficult game. They were very defensive-minded and it was hard for us to create scoring chances," Ramos said after the match on Wednesday.