Iran coach Branko Ivankovic has called time on his stint with the Asian nation, bringing five years working with the country's national team to an end following Wednesday's 1-1 draw with Angola.

Ivankovic, who worked for one year as an assistant to former coach Miroslav Blazevic before taking over as head coach in late 2002, will not renew his contract after Iran finished bottom of Group D with just one point from three games.

"My contract with the Iranian football federation is going to finish on July 1 and of course we didn't speak about renewing this contract," he said. "We didn't speak about anything."

During his time in charge, Ivankovic led Iran's under-23 team to the gold medal at the Asian Games in Busan in 2002 and took them to the semi-finals of the Asian Cup in China two years later.

He then helped the senior team qualify for the World Cup after the nation had missed out on the 2002 finals in Japan and South Korea under Blazevic.

However, defeats at the hands of Mexico and Portugal left the Iranians with nothing to play for but pride in their final game against Angola.

After going behind to a goal by Flavio on the hour mark, Sohrab Bakhtiarizadeh scored with a header 15 minutes from time to earn his team a point.

"I think we lacked just the small things to go to the second round," said the Croatian of his team's World Cup campaign.

"We had a big chance against Mexico to take one point and, of course, we also deserved to win against Angola.

"But in football many times you just need a small step to do something, but this step is very hard to take."

Yesterday's result meant Angola had no chance of taking a place in the knockout phase as Luis Oliveira Goncalves' team needed to win against the Iranians to have any chance of progressing.

But the Angolan coach had few regrets and conceded that neither his team nor Iran were good enough to make it into the last 16.

"If you look at the performance of both teams, neither deserved to win," he said. "It was warm and it was hard for the players to play under the blistering sun.

"I'd like to send my congratulations to Mexico and Portugal because they were the best teams in our group and they deserved to go through to the next round."