If there’s one thing the World Cup break will provide for Celtic, it’s respite from the seemingly-never-ending shambles of VAR in the Scottish Premiership.
Whilst the obvious point of contention from last night’s 2-1 win at Fir Park was Jota’s disallowed goal after Kyogo’s magnificent assist which was, at best, a pretty inconclusive offside call, there was another decision in the match that was a far greater microcosm of VAR’s specific failings in the Scottish game.
With around ten minutes to go, Josh Morris clattered into Carl Starfelt just inside the Motherwell half. It was a brutal challenge, one that ticked every possible qualification for a sending off, be it the ball being long gone, catching the player high, excessive force, being out of control; you name it, Morris’ challenge had it.
It left Starfelt, who has missed so much football with injury so far this season that last night was only his sixth appearance of 2022/23 for the Scottish champions, crumpled on the Fir Park turf, yet referee Willie Collum saw fit to only issue the Motherwell player a yellow card.
VAR checked the call and agreed with the official, Morris stayed on the pitch, and though Celtic went on to score a second and see the game out despite Ross Tierney’s rapid response to Daizen Maeda’s goal, it was yet another ludicrous use of the technology that could well have cost Ange Postecoglou’s side.
Celtic have overcome at least one erroneous and potentially game-changing VAR call in three of their four league games since the technology was introduced, winning all four of those games. Though most of these calls have surrounded farcical penalty calls, the Starfelt incident was a symptom of a far greater problem that VAR can’t address.
Morris’ tackle on the Swedish defender is the kind of challenge that time and again, isn’t deemed worthy of a red card in Scotland. No matter how many extra angles VAR provides, it’s appears to be a mindset amongst those who officiate in the Scottish game that we have a more physical, tougher sport than in other leagues.
Whilst there will be the odd reducer that the official manning the technology deems worthy of a red card offence, the exceptionalism that referees have when it comes to officiating the game in Scotland is not something that the technology is either designed to, or is capable of fixing.
As others had pre-empted and as we’ve said consistently at 67 Hail Hail, VAR in Scotland was almost certainly going to be a disaster from the off. Hopefully, use of the technology will improve with time, as issues highlighted in this first month are ironed out, but it is not, and will never be a panacea to the discourse, and more importantly, the fundamental issues with how the game is refereed in Scotland.
In other news: “Just ludicrous”; Ange Postecoglou pushes back on emerging Celtic narrative
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
