“First of all I would like to congratulate my players for the wonderful fighting spirit against a candidate to win the World Cup… We deserved a better result. There is no doubt that Spain played wonderful stylish football, it is what they do, it is their responsibility to play like that, but I think we deserved more, we deserved much better during the game,” Queiroz told reporters at the post-match press conference.
Iran midfielder Saeid Ezatolahi Afagh thought he had equalized through the second half, but his goal was ruled out for offside after the referee consulted the video assistant referee system.
However, Carlos Queiroz argued Wednesday night that his team were still "winners" following their defeat in Kazan.
"I think they started to use this system [video referee assistant system] too late. If they had started to use it earlier, we could have had one goal today… We deserved a better result. Today we are the winners because we've learnt a lot," Queiroz said.
Iran will face reigning European champions Portugal in their next World Cup encounter in Saransk on June 25.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicked off on June 14 and will continue until July 15, with the matches being played in 11 cities across Russia.
