The three-time champions pulled off an incredible 4-3 quarter-final win against South Korea on Saturday despite arriving a day earlier decimated by suspensions and missing a night's sleep after their flight was diverted due to bad weather.

"I told our players to just think about the positive points and not to be pessimistic," Ivankovic said. "I told them to be optimistic all the time about playing good football and to think only about winning, and nothing else.

"When I saw the patience of my players after all these problems I realised that we would play a good match and we would win. Going through all these problems together united us."

The three-times champions had looked down and out of the tournament after their controversial group match with Oman, when they had three players suspended for fighting and stamping and were lucky to escape with a draw.

But a 0-0 encounter with Japan saw them through to the quarter-finals, where they took the lead three times against South Korea only for the World Cup semi-finalists to draw level each time.

However, Man of the Match Ali Karimi shook off the fatigue to flick home his third of the night deep into the second half, settling the seven-goal thriller in front of 31,500 screaming fans.

"I'm glad the spectators here were able to see a very interesting game," said Ivankovic.

"Even after Korea kept on scoring goals to stay in the match our players kept working to win," he added.

The result was sweet revenge for Iran, who were bundled out of the quarter-finals of the last Asian Cup by a Lee Dong-Gook golden goal.

Karimi's treble, the first hat-trick of the tournament, made him joint top-scorer with Lee who bows out on four goals.