The Confederations Cup was founded in 1992 as an international association football tournament for national teams and is currently held every four years. It consists of eight teams from six confederations. The most successful team in the competition is Brazil with four wins. They won it in 2013, with the runners-up position going to Spain.
Last year the tournament was held in Brazil while this year it's being held in Russia.
Technology makes its mark refereeing in the Confederations Cup
In today's Confederations Cup Group B matchup between Cameroon and Chile, the Video Assistant Referee made two crucial calls that one might either say canceled each other and were inconsequential in the end, or that it has again proved why it's essential to have VAR in games.
It will also go a long way to helping players and fans see to it that one: No player gets away with goals that were illegal and two: No player gets wrongly judged out of a legitimate goal.
In the first half and throughout the whole game Chile had a strong command of the game, kept possession and really did deserve the win. The Cameroon goalkeeper, Fabrice Ondoa played a crucial role in the game as he stopped three attempts on goal in the first half and made innumerable pass and cross interceptions.
He was wrongfully bested in the first half by Eduardo Vargas who scored in the first half after a play by Vidal and had already started celebrating but was angered when the VAR decided that the goal was not to be counted as he was offside.
I can imagine he didn't think too much of VAR at that moment as he went on to argue with the referee who couldn't do anything about the call as he was not the one who made it.
La Rosa won the game with noted input from Alexis Sanchez and the VAR
The Copa America's Holders coach Juan Antonio Pizzi must have had some luck today and also supposedly some really motivating language up his sleeve which he dished out to his team during the half-time break because when they came back for the second half they still brought their A game and played well.
The coach also took a brave move by playing Alexis Sanchez in the 58th minute despite his injured ankle which was hurt during training on Thursday. This gamble bore fruit though as Sanchez proved to be essential to the creation of both goals.
In the first half, Chile dominated Cameroon but wasn't being deadly enough. Sanchez brought that into the game and La Roja attacked really strongly.
The effort paid off in the 81st minute when a header from Alexis Sanchez found the man of the match, Antonio Vidal free in the box and the Bayern Munich man headed down and finally bested Cameroon keeper Joseph Ondoa.
There's a possibility that goal worked significantly in destroying the Cameroon team's confidence, including their star keeper Ondoa, as minutes later in the 90th minute Eduardo Vargas got his ball past the keeper too. This time it came to him in the form of a deflected shot from Alexis Sanchez which gave him the golden opportunity.
In the first half, we established that Vargas must have been far from being the number one fan of VAR. This time though, I believe he thanked God for it as this time after the referee had counted his goal as being offside guess who came to his aid?
You guessed it: the VAR system granted him a goal -- the second one for La Roja, which gave them a 2-0 advantage over Cameroon.
La Rosa is now set to face Germany on Thursday and Cameroon are to face Australia on match day two.
