Brendan Rodgers will face his SFA charge this week after the Celtic manager’s comments against the match officials in the 2-0 defeat to Hearts at Tynecastle last month.
VAR operator, John Beaton, changed the course of the game when he intervened on a Tomoki Iwata “handball” and for the red card award for Celtic winger, Hyunjun Yang.
Both incidents were dealt with at the time by match referee, Don Robertson. A yellow card was issued to Yang and the Iwata handball was ignored as it was, quite clearly, not a handball.
Rodgers was livid and called out Beaton in his post-match interview. At the time, the Celtic manager said, “I never like to comment on officials, it’s not something I do. But that cost us today. The officiating from on the field, to John Beaton being in VAR, that was really, really poor.”
Rodgers then elaborated on his comments about the performance of the officials and this is the comment that made the SFA step in and charge the Hoops boss, “It’s incompetence. And I think the first one is a great example of the game being refereed outside of the pitch.
“This is the thing everyone is talking about, that the officials do their job and if it’s something that’s clear and obvious maybe step in.” [The Scotsman]
Brendan Rodgers could face the wrath of the SFA
The furore that ensued and Rodgers’ use of the word ‘incompetence’ led to the charge and Chief Executive of the Scottish FA releasing a statement about the public comments on his match officials as he looked to defend his employees.
Maxwell said at the time [Daily Record], “We must work together to alleviate the unsustainable pressure on match officials and VAR operators, to remove the convenient blame culture attached to subjective or unpopular decisions, and to ensure more focus is placed on the entertainers rather than the on-field facilitators.
“We will continue conversations and improvements with all stakeholders with this as a non-negotiable and unifying premise as we seek to improve the experience for all.”
As Rodgers is the first manager to be charged by the SFA this season for his strong words against VAR and the SFA officials, Maxwell could take the opportunity this week to instil a harsh punishment on the Celtic boss as a warning to the rest of the Scottish game that targeting match officials prior to a game is simply not on.
Of course, the Celtic manager was absolutely correct in his summation of the game. How any match official can look at both those decisions in the Tynecastle game and come to the conclusion that Robertson and Beaton did is laughable.
Especially the handball considering UEFA had issued clear guidance on how clubs should be dealing with ones like Iwata’s.
It’s not a blame culture. It’s managers in the game becoming increasingly annoyed at how VAR is implemented and it’s not only Rodgers who is frustrated with the way VAR is being used in Scottish football.
Motherwell, Aberdeen and even Rangers have all had issues. And just this week we have seen Stuart Kettlewell’s club ‘demand answers‘ on a bizarre handball given against his club just before the international break.
Maybe Maxwell will start to listen to the people in the game and take on board the criticism and hopefully the appointment of Craig Beattie to the player liaison role this month is a step towards doing that.
Rodgers is due to face the SFA on the 28th of March and every Celtic fan will be watching to see if their gaffer will banned from the Ibrox dugout for the Glasgow Derby next month should the SFA take action.
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
