In his second stint as head coach of Iran, Ghalehnoy repeated what he did in the 2007 AFC Asian Cup by guiding his side to a winning start to the tournament with the 60-year-old paying tribute to the depth of his squad.

“Most of the time the first match in the tournament is difficult,” said Ghalehnoy. “We’re happy with the result but not the performance. We scored early and that made things easy for us.

“We can be happy until tomorrow but after that we have to start thinking about Hong Kong. We have to think every match is like a final.”

“We have a very good squad where the quality is about the same. I choose my starting line-up based on my training, opponents and tactics.

“You can see how Karim (Ansarifard) and (Mehdi) Ghayedi performed. Even those that came on did well, so it’s just proof that we don’t have a first or second team.”

It was Ansarifard who got the goals flowing for Team Melli with his strike after just two minutes, the fastest IR Iran have scored in an AFC Asian Cup match since Hussain Ali Kilani’s goal against Myanmar in 1968.

It was followed by further efforts from Shojae Khalilzadeh and Ghayedi before Palestine pulled one back just before half-time through Tamer Seyam, however, experienced forward Sardar Azmoun killed any hope of a comeback with the fourth in the second half.

Another player who deserved plaudits was Brentford FC’s Saman Ghoddos who supplied the assists for the first two goals, an influential performance that earned him the player-of-the-match award.

“To be honest, I don’t know what I think about it (the award),” said Ghoddos. “It’s a good team performance, and I like that over any individual performance.

“I have to thank the coach. I love the position I’m playing right now where I get to be involved more but I will play wherever the coach wants me to play.”Meanwhile it’s back to the drawing board for Makram Daboub and his Palestinian side after a difficult match where they only saw 38.3% of the ball possession in front of 27,691 fans at the Education City Stadium.

With matches against UAE (Thursday) and Hong Kong, China (Jan 23), Daboub retains his belief that Palestine could yet take their place in the knockout stage should they be able to improve in the coming days.

“Concerning the match, I believe our start was difficult,” said Daboub. “We needed to focus better. But this is only the opening match, there are still two matches waiting, hopefully we can come back and qualify for the Round of 16.

“We knew that the match was going to be difficult because we’re playing Iran, who are likely to win the tournament.

“Maybe the players were over excited and overconfident, the reasons behind the lack of concentration at the start of the game.”