World Cup: Uruguay beat Saudi Arabia to progress, Spain scrape past Iran

Spain have edged out Iran to go within a win of qualification for the World Cup second round.

Iran frustrated the 2010 champions for much of the match but the goal finally came in the 51st minute when it deflected in off Diego Costa’s knee.

Saeid Ezatolahi hit the back of the net just a few minutes later but the referee deferred to VAR which proved he was offside.

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Iran had earlier came close to scoring through Karim Ansarifard and Mehdi Taremi.

Spain will reach the knockout stage if they defeat Morocco on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, Uruguay’s win over Saudi Arabia guaranteed that both they and Russia would progress from Group A.

Luis Suarez, making his 100th Uruguay appearance, scored the only goal of the game in the 21st minute when goalkeeper Mohammed Al Owais failed to deal with a corner.

Saudi Arabia were vastly improved from their opening-day 5-0 loss to Russia.

Fahad Al Muwallad and Mohamed Kanno threatened at times but were unable to breach the Uruguay defence.

In the first game of the day, Cristiano Ronaldo scored the only goal of the game as Portugal survived a late Morocco onslaught.

Cover Photo: FIFA World Cup 2014 by Mariya Butd used under license by CC BY 2.0.

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