Luiz Felipe Scolari revealed he had been forced to "change the mentality" of his players ahead of Portugal's 2-0 victory over Iran which sent them through to the second round.

The Portuguese had come under fire following a poor opening performance in the 1-0 victory over Angola.

And Portugal coach Scolari admitted the game was a big improvement after a goal from Deco and a penalty from Cristiano Ronaldo.

He said: "Yesterday´s scoreless draw from Mexico versus Angola helped me to convince the team that Angola were a very strong side. That is important for a coach.

"I had to change the mentality of the players. They had more respect and were not as nervous as they were against Angola.

"Today was one of our best performances in the last six or seven matches and we will now take it step by step. For the first time in 40 years we had the chance to qualify for the second round and the players knew that."

Portugal now play Mexico in their last Group D match on Wednesday, and Scolari revealed: "For the last match we will now pick our line-up considering injuries and yellow-card bans."

Iran bow out of the World Cup, and coach Branko Ivankovic said: "We were making more and more mistakes and just when I wanted to make my substitutions to change the flow of the game they scored a wonderful goal through Deco. That just shows his quality."

Ivankovic defended his decision to keep veteran striker Ali Daei on the bench despite insisting he would start the day before the match.

"Maybe it was a surprise but it made our team faster and our team came up very good. We played a very good game against a strong Portuguese team. It was hard to make something happen against them."