Fifa boss hails Barca
LONDON – Barcelona’s extraordinary fightback to beat Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League demonstrated football’s unique capacity for surprise, Fifa president Gianni Infantino said yesterday.
“Whenever you have the feeling you have seen everything, something else comes along that you’ve never seen before,” Infantino told reporters in London following a Fifa executive football summit. “It’s just amazing and incredible.” Trailing 4-0 from the first leg of their last 16 tie, Barcelona pulled off a 6-1 win in Wednesday’s second leg at Camp Nou to complete the biggest comeback in the competition’s history.
Barcelona’s fifth goal came in contentious circumstances, with Neymar netting a stoppage-time penalty after Luis Suarez went to ground despite minimal contact from PSG defender Marquinhos.
Fifa is currently trialling the use of video assistant referees (VARs), who are allowed to alert referees to mistakes concerning goals, penalties, red cards or cases of mistaken identity.
Infantino would not comment on the decision to award Barcelona the penalty, but said it emphasised the need for care to be taken when making changes to the game.
“We were speaking at dinner with the chairman and the CEO of the English and Scottish associations,” he said.
“We were saying we have to be really careful if we want to touch the rules, because football is such an incredible game.
“VAR will be there in future, hopefully to correct clear mistakes of the referee. In this case, I don’t know if it was a clear mistake or not. But in future, when there are clear mistakes, this will be corrected by the video assistant referee.”