SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell believes the introduction of VAR to the Scottish Premiership has been a success and insists the World Cup has underlined issues with video technology are a global issue.
St Mirren boss Stephen Robinson became the latest figure to hit out at the "joke" handball rule that's leading to more penalty awards than before the technology was in use. Ange Postecoglou has also been vocal over fears it's taking match officials too long to reach a conclusion once incidents are escalated by the VAR referees. But Maxwell reckons VAR is doing what it's meant to do and that the statistics back that up. And he thinks things will only get better once the top flight exits cold storage after the Qatar showpiece.
He told Sky Sports: "It's done what it's supposed to do. We had a call with managers and chief executives from the Premiership yesterday 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's exactly where Scotland is.
"In typical Scottish football fashion we are 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 everyone understands that it's working and we can all just settle down and start talking about the football again."
Maxwell is convinced the process of VAR will only get smoother with time and he has drawn similarities to the decisions being made in Qatar at international football's showpiece event.
"I'm sure it will," Maxwell continued. "It's been interesting because a lot of the challenges that we've seen in the first five rounds of fixtures that we've had, we are seeing in the World Cup. So it just shows that we are not doing anything different from anybody else, we are not making different decisions.
"The handball rule is one that everybody is talking about at the moment and that's always going to be subjective. There have been decisions made in Qatar that are similar to the one's being made here and vice versa. That highlights that it's a global issue in terms of interpreting the rules rather than VAR technology which is working as it should do."
Maxwell also revealed that changes could be made to the handball rule but he reckons it’s ultimately subjective and will continue to cause debate among pundits, supporters and managers.
He added: "The handball rule is always the most subjective, it's always the most difficult one. You can ask a hundred people and they could tell you that they don't like it, but they couldn't tell you how they would change it to make it better because it's not a fact, if it's a handball, it's a penalty type rule. You can't have a rule that says that. There needs to be more nuance to it and that's always going to lead to a subjective element. So IFAB will continually assess and review the regulations and if we can make any changes then we will absolutely do that."
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