Mistakes happen! SFA chief Maxwell warns that human error will always play a part in football as League Cup final VAR row rumbles on

SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell has warned that VAR will never remove human error from the decision-making of officials following Sunday’s League Cup final controversy.

New Rangers CEO Patrick Stewart sought an explanation from the SFA over the non-award of a penalty at Hampden when Celtic defender Liam Scales pulled back Ibrox winger Vaclav Cerny.

Still images showed that the pull continued into the penalty box, with former referee Bobby Madden stating on social media that it was ‘100 per cent a penalty kick’ before expressing surprise that the three-man VAR team of Alan Muir, Frank Connor and Andrew Dallas failed to upgrade a free-kick to a penalty.

All three officials have been left off this weekend’s match list in the Scottish Premiership, with head of referees Willie Collum scheduled to publicly address accusations of an error when the SFA’s VAR Review Show airs this morning.

Speaking in Glasgow as the SFA launched a campaign to raise £50million to improve grassroots football facilities over the next five years, Maxwell claimed VAR was improving the standard of facilities, but will never reach a state of perfect.

‘Decisions will be wrong,’ he admitted. ‘That’s a given. We’ll eradicate them as much as we possibly can.

Cerny appeals in vain for a penalty and Rangers have demanded answers over the non-award

‘VAR has done that in a vast majority of cases. There are always going to be one or two that will fall outwith that, because there’s people involved and in anything that involves a person in any walk of life, there will be decisions made that don’t go the way we want them to go or are incorrect. That’s just part of human nature.

‘We are talking about one decision at the moment. This is the first time that anybody has asked (SFA President Mike Mulraney) or I about VAR decisions this season. This time last year, it was every week.

‘So there has definitely been improvement. The transparency has improved, the referees’ performances on the pitch are improving.

‘There will always be decisions that go against you. We are still raging about the penalty that we should have got against Hungary. But we didn’t go to war with UEFA.

‘I am not saying what happened at the weekend was right or wrong, but there are fundamental moments in matches, and referees and match officials have a part to play in that.

‘I am not downplaying that or belittling it in any shape or form, I get the significance of it. But it happens and that is the reality of it.’

Pointing out that managers and chief executives routinely query decisions with head of referees Collum, Maxwell dismissed talk of Rangers making ‘demands’ of the governing body or ‘being at war’ with Hampden office bearers.

‘Listen, there is always the sensationalised bit about clubs going to war with the SFA,’ he continued. ‘What does that actually mean?

‘If a club are unhappy with any refereeing decision, they phone Willie and have a conversation with him about the whats and the whys.

‘Sometimes they are right to be unhappy, sometimes they are not. And then it is done. There is no war, there is no lasting debate about it. That is what happens.

‘The process we have got now, the transparency that we have got with Willie doing it, we have got the Key Match Incidents panel that comes out on a weekly basis. Nobody has to wait for any length of time to work out whether the decision was actually right or was actually wrong.’

SFA president Mulraney described the row since Sunday as ‘white noise’, reiterating the view that VAR will never be perfect so long as it’s used by imperfect human beings.

‘In three years from now, nothing that we are talking about will matter,’ said the former Alloa chairman.

‘It is what enthrals us and engages today as a society. But in three years’ time, that pitch out there is still there.

‘We have to overcome these road bumps. Is VAR ever going to perfect? No, but it is better than what we had before.’