Video replays urged for FIFA referees
(03-11 19:20)
Referees should be allowed to consult video replays and football needs to accept the "inevitable'' use of technology, according to FIFA presidential hopeful Jerome Champagne.
Champagne suggests in a document sent to FIFA member nations on Monday that video replays could help referees judge situations such as offside on disputed goals, red card incidents and if fouls are inside the penalty area.
"It is an illusion to think that it can be disregarded in football,'' Champagne wrote about the potential for giving referees high-tech help. "Such technology will, of course, have to be introduced in measured way and be limited to dead-ball situations.''
The former international relations adviser to FIFA President Sepp Blatter said the debate is needed "without resorting to any ostrich tactics or dogma.''
Champagne takes the opposite view to UEFA President Michel Platini, who fears recent approval for goal-line technology will lead to video replay and remove the human element of decision-making by match officials.
The Frenchmen are seen as leading candidates to succeed Blatter if he fulfills a promise to stand down in 2015. The 77-year-old Swiss has hinted he wants to stay in the job he has already occupied for 15 years.
"I have not decided that I would run, nor have I decided that I will not run,'' Champagne, who left FIFA in 2010, told Inside Sport Africa magazine in an interview this month.
The 209 FIFA associations who received Champagne's wide-ranging 10-page proposal will elect the FIFA president in two years' time.
He stakes out further challenges to Platini by describing the "elitist'' appeal of "two or three western European club competitions'' as a threat to developing football across the world.
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