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
on Thursday.
"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 the incident 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 so we can make sure decisive matches
are not decided by mistakes made in good faith by the referee."
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