Former top referee Mark Clattenburg has added to concerns about VAR in Scottish football ahead of its proposed introduction into the Premiership next week.
The technology has been embraced in most top flight European leagues in the last few years, as well as being utilised to varying degrees in UEFA’s three major club competitions and international tournaments.
However, there have been complaints about the SFA’s decision to introduce VAR mid-way through this league season, amongst other concerns about refereeing consistency with the technology in place, and Clattenburg added his name to the latter list.
He told BBC’s Sacked in the Morning Podcast (From 25:00): “It still has this human element of mistake. We believe that VAR is a technology – it’s not – it’s a human being looking at an incident again from different angles.
“We still have this debate about what’s a penalty and what isn’t, what’s a clear and obvious error from the referee. All these elements create inconsistency and, while we’ve got inconsistency, VAR will never be accepted. I think more and more we accept that it should be just used for the big decisions, big mistakes.
“We’re now talking about a small shirt pull that hasn’t been detected in the penalty area, VAR should interfere, and you’ll have this in Scotland. What is given one week, sometimes isn’t given the next and I think it creates a big discussion and a big inconsistency.”
Clattenburg overall believed that VAR has been beneficial for the game, and that it has changed player behaviour substantially.
He said: “I believe that it’s helped the game, It’s like a police car on the top of a bridge on a motorway. You slow down.
“I think players now at corner kicks and free-kicks are less likely to pull because they don’t want to get penalised, so I think we are seeing more goals from attacking free-kicks and corners than we’ve ever seen, because, for me, many, many years ago, there was too much holding in the penalty area.
“The referees didn’t have the bottle to give a penalty. It was easier to give the defence a free-kick, rightly or wrongly but now I think that VAR has improved that side of it.”
Clattenburg’s warning is the second in the space of a few days about the fallibility of the new technology after SFA Chief Executive Ian Maxwell warned that the technology’s introductory months are set to be “horrendous”.
Celtic’s game at Tynecastle against Hearts on the 22nd of October will be the first televised Scottish Premiership match with VAR, less than a day after its full introduction at Easter Road the night prior, when Hibs host St Johnstone.
Anyone believing that VAR’s introduction will put any sort of end to constant refereeing discourse is pretty optimistic to say the least, with drama over decisions all-but-guaranteed in Scottish football at all times – don’t hold your breath for it changing with or without VAR.
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