BOGOTA — FIFA are expected to rubber-stamp video assistant referee technology (VAR) for this summer's World Cup despite lingering opposition from within and outside football. Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, will oversee the governing body's meeting in Bogota happy to give the green light to the system despite a long, personal spell of skepticism. VAR is something positive that will bring much more to the transparency of football, said Infantino ahead of the FIFA Council meeting starting Friday. Video refereeing isn't going to be the solution to everything in football. What we want to do is avoid resounding mistakes by referees. At the World Cup in Russia from June 14-July 15, VAR will be used to judge whether or not a goal has been scored, analyze whether a penalty should be awarded, decide on red cards and rectify if a player has been mistakenly sanctioned. The game's lawmakers, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), had decided two weeks ago at its meeting in Zurich to support VAR at the World Cup. VAR has been trialed since 2016 by around 20 federations including the German Bundesliga and Italian Serie A. But it has not been universally welcomed with even UEFA, the European governing body, still to be convinced. Nobody knows exactly how VAR will work. There is already a lot of confusion, said UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin who insists that VAR will not be used in next season's Champions League. I am not at all against it but we must better explain when it will be used. We will see at the World Cup. Elsewhere at the FIFA Council meeting, discussions will be held on the presentation of the two dossiers for hosting the 2026 World Cup where Morocco is battling against a joint USA-Canada-Mexico bid. Host countries for the 2019 Under-17 and Under-20 world championships will also be decided. Russia cracks down on 800 World Cup ticket sites Russia has cracked down on more than 800 websites illegally offering World Cup tickets after their general sale resumed after a six week wait. FIFA is touting overwhelming demand from both Russia and abroad for admission to the Football showpiece. But organizers were forced to apologize after fans had to wait five hours on line once game passes became available again through FIFA on Tuesday. It appears that some people's patience snapped and they decided to explore the web's other options. The Roskomnadzor communications regulator did the same. The agency on Thursday reported discovering 858 Russian web pages claiming to have tempting offers for the June 14 to July 15 tournament. Based on Roskomnadzor demands, the illegal information was removed from most (822) Internet resources, the agency said in a statement. It said eight websites failed to remove their advertisement and were blocked. Another 28 still have time to respond to the notice. Organizers raised the alarm early about the possibility of Russians trying to circumnavigate the law. Organizers are touting tremendous ticket success despite Russia's first World Cup being held under a cloud of deteriorating relations with the West. Things grew from bad to worse when London on Wednesday kept ministers and royals from attending over a nerve agent attack on a former double agent in England. It also warned travelers about the risk of anti-British sentiment or harassment and the dangers of discussing politics in public. Yet England is still one of the top 10 recipients of the 1,660,316 tickets either purchased or ordered so far. Foreign demand makes up slightly more than half of the sales — a figure FIFA is proud of. The biggest interest outside Russia has come from Colombia and Brazil by a rather substantial margin. — AFP