Dream goes on for Iran despite Spain defeat
IRAN’S dream of reaching the knockout stage of the World Cup survived Wednesday’s loss to Spain and coach Carlos Queiroz promised his team would give its absolute all to take its second chance against his native Portugal next week.
Queiroz said his players deserved huge credit for their battling performance after going down 0-1 to a freak Diego Costa goal and having a score of its own rubbed out after being reviewed by the video assistant referee.
“We were ready to suffer and ready to compete and ready to try our chances to win the game. Football is not like this but it is fair to say we deserved a better result,” said Queiroz.
“But this was our first match point, if we compare this to tennis, our second match point comes against Portugal. We’re still alive and dreaming.”
Iran had relied almost entirely on its defense to keep it in the match for the first 54 minutes and it was only after the ball had deflected off Costa’s knee and into the net that it took the game to Spain.
Queiroz had no complaints about the VAR decision which ruled out Saeid Ezatolahi’s strike for offside, preferring instead to rue that it had not been around at the 2010 World Cup when his Portugal was beaten by a contentious Spain goal.
Iran’s opening victory over Morocco means it trails the two Iberian powers by a single point in Group B with all to play for against the European champion.
“We are not shy, we go for it, we are really determined,” Queiroz added. “We know it will be tough but we don’t come here expecting easy things. We only have one thing in mind.”
Iran went down narrowly to Argentina at the last World Cup with a similarly battling performance, only exhausted by its efforts, lost 1-3 to Bosnia and Herzegovina in its final group match.