Late goals from Arturo Vidal and Eduardo Vargas saw Chile open their Confederations Cup campaign with a 2-0 win over Cameroon.
However, the result is unlikely to spare FIFA having to answer some difficult questions about the video assistant referee (VAR) system.
It was Vidal who led the complaints after Vargas’ first-time finish from the Bayern Munich midfielder’s pass at the end of the first half was ruled out for offside after a referral.
However, it took more than a minute from the ball going into the net to the goal being overturned by the VAR and the game was not restarted before the interval.
A replay showed Vargas may have been just a few centimetres offside, leaving the incident open to debate as regulations for VAR use state the original decision can only be changed if it is “clearly wrong”.
Chile’s protests as they walked off fell on deaf ears and it appeared the decision would cost them all three points in group B until Vidal rose at the far post to head in a cross from Alexis Sanchez, who was only fit to come off the bench because of an ankle injury.
Vargas eventually got his goal in stoppage time at the end of the second half, and this time he benefited from a VAR decision as a linesman’s offside flag was overturned after Sanchez ran through and had a shot blocked allowing Vargas to follow up and score.
Cameroon could also have argued they should have had a referral in the first half when Vincent Aboubakar was harshly adjudged to have pulled back Vidal as Michael Ngadjui headed in a free-kick.
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