This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, signalled that he is in favour of introducing video assistant referees (VARs) at next year’s World Cup following its success at the Confederations Cup, although he conceded the system needs to be improved.

“Nothing is standing in the way of using VARs [at the World Cup], as far as I’m concerned,” Infantino told a news conference in St Petersburg on the eve of the Confederations Cup final. “So far it has been successful. We are learning, we are improving, we are continuing the tests.“

The system involves two video assistant referees watching the action remotely and then drawing the match referee’s attention to officiating mistakes. Fifa said the system corrected six game-changing decisions during the Confederations Cup.

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“Without the VARs, we would have had a different tournament,” Infantino said. “And a tournament which would have been a little less fair.“

But Infantino, who said that the system had been tested so far in 74 matches, added that certain aspects needed to be refined. “We need to work still on some of the details, on the communication and the speed of the decisions being taken,” he said.

The time needed to make decisions has been criticised. There has also been debate about which circumstances it should be used for as some close calls are decided without consulting the VARs.

The use of the system has caused controversy at times, such as during Germany’s 3-1 group stage win against Cameroon when the referee Wilmar Roldan needed two reviews of an incident to send off the correct Cameroon player.

Chile were denied a legitimate-looking goal after video review in their 2-0 win against Cameroon on 18 June, and it was again used at the end of the same match to overturn a linesman’s offside call and award Chile a goal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gianni Infantino, left, and Vitaly Mutko field questions from the media at the Confederations Cup in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Photograph: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images

The former World Cup final referee Pierluigi Collina, the chairman of Fifa’s referees committee, said on Saturday that the system was a “very positive tool” to help referees make the right calls and took pressure off them.

“We are in a sort of work in progress,” Collina said. “We see the very positive result we had but we are aware that we can improve. This is normal.”

Football’s law-making body, Ifab, is expected to decide next March whether to allow video assistant referees to become part of the game on a permanent basis. Chile face World Cup holders Germany in Sunday’s Confederations Cup final.

Infantino was also asked about allegations of systematic doping in Russian sport, and said Russian players were regularly tested in international competition and results always came up negative.

Sitting beside him, the Russian deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, reacted angrily to a question about doping and sarcastically offered to perform a Russian dance if the media stopped asking him about the topic.

In an answer which lasted nearly nine minutes, Mutko, who is also head of the Russian Football Union (RFU), repeated previous denials concerning alleged doping in Russian football.

“If I perform a Russia dance here in front of you, will you stop asking?” he said, speaking through a translator.

“I don’t know how to react to this,” added Mutko, whose country will host next year’s World Cup. “We are investing a lot of money into sports and we don’t need doping to win a bronze medal that doesn’t mean much.

“We have never been supporting people who are using doping.“

Fifa has said that it was still investigating the allegation that footballers were among the 1,000-plus athletes mentioned in the McLaren report published last year, which said more than 1,000 Russian athletes were involved or benefited from institutional doping.