The spot kick was awarded 70 seconds into the contest when Yaser Rawashdeh was adjudged to have handled just inside the area as an innocuous through ball bounced up to hit the defender.

Referee Hiroyoshi Takayama pointed to the spot despite no appeals from Uzbekistan, who appeared equally as bemused as Jordan at the decision.

Rawashdeh was booked for his protests before Mirzaev stepped up and calmly slotted the ball into the centre of the goal, evading the dive of Jordan goalkeeper Emad Feras.

“Maybe we were lucky but if we hadn’t had a penalty we would’ve scored during the game,” he said.

“In football the best team wins. Maybe it was luck, I don’t know.”

Jordan coach Ahmed Abdel Al Qader obviously hit out at Japanese official Takayama following the award of the spot kick in Khobar.

“It should not have been a penalty,” said Al Qader. “His hand was not moving and was next to his body so it should not have been a penalty.”

Counterpart Ubaydullaev refused to comment on the incident and said: “The referee knows what a penalty is.”

Ubaydullaev revealed before the tournament that a number of his side were suffering with injuries and some struggled in the closing stages of the contest and required treatment as time expired.

Takayama judged the players to be feigning injury and time wasting and dished out a number of bookings which aggrieved Ubaydullaev.

He said: “Were there five yellow cards?

“In Friday’s game between Saudi Arabia and Iran, when an Iranian player went down injured, the referee didn’t show a yellow card.

“Five of our players were shown yellow cards. It’s a misunderstanding. The injuries in this game were real.”

Uzbekistan meet Australia in their second match and Ubaydullaev is aware another tough contest awaits.

“We expected a difficult game and the next one will be the same as our group is very, very strong,” he said.

Meanwhile, after insisting he was not too disappointed with his team’s display in the opener, Al Qader will hope for a better result as Jordan look to kick start their campaign against Thailand.

“I was satisfied with the level of my team,” he said. “We tried our best.”