VAR was introduced in the Scottish Premiership in October; 41 of the 42 SPFL clubs voted in favour of the technology; Concerns over speed and communication have since been levelled by managers, players and supporters; Ian Maxwell: "It's done what it's supposed to do"
Tuesday 27 December 2022 16:59, UK
Scottish Football Association chief executive Ian Maxwell is adamant the implementation of VAR has served its purpose so far, despite criticism surrounding its use.
The technology was introduced in the cinch Premiership in late October but there have been a range of complaints from managers, players and supporters over certain decisions and the length of time taken for incidents to be checked.
Maxwell acknowledges there have been "challenges" in the early weeks of VAR but insists the system is ultimately resulting in more correct calls being made.
"It's done what it's supposed to do," Maxwell told Sky Sports. "We had a call with managers and chief execs from the Premiership and gave them some feedback.
"When you analyse the statistics, VAR across the world has taken the number of correct decisions from 92 per cent to 98 per cent and that is exactly where Scotland is.
"In typical Scottish football fashion we're spending a lot of time analysing less results than we used to, and there's been a huge focus on it because it's newly implemented.
"Hopefully everybody understands that it's working and we can all settle down and just start talking about football again."
Maxwell is confident concerns about VAR in Scotland will dissipate once everyone adapts to it.
"It's been interesting because a lot of the challenges that we've seen in the first five rounds of fixtures we are seeing in the World Cup. It just shows that we're not doing anything different from anybody else, we're not making different decisions.
"The handball rule is one that everyone is talking about at the moment and that's always going to be subjective.
"There have been decisions that have been made in Qatar that are similar to ones made here and vice versa. That just highlights that it's a global issue in terms of interpretation of rules rather than VAR technology, which is working as it should do."
He added: "IFAB will continually review the regulations and if we can make changes that will make things more straightforward we will absolutely do that."
Maxwell was on a Zoom call with match officials and Premiership managers on Tuesday to discuss some of the issues encountered in the early implementation of VAR.
"Us giving them some feedback on the challenges we have from a refereeing perspective and them giving us feedback on the challenges they find from a game-management perspective, from a dugout perspective, how the communication works between the fourth official and the managers is hugely important," he said.
"From the educational aspect, we're still in the very early stages of everybody understanding exactly what it does and how it works. The more we can communicate, the easier it will be."
