UEFA embarrass Scottish FA with a well deserved ref snub

The Celtic Star

·24 April 2024

UEFA embarrass Scottish FA with a well deserved ref snub

Scottish referees snubbed for Euros, who’d have thought it?

The calibre of match officials in this country is poor, there’s no getting away from it. Our men in the middle and behind the scenes in VAR are utter incompetent there is no other word for it, or there is but let’s just leave that be for just now.

That was further confirmed yesterday when not one Scottish official was selected by UEFA for the upcoming Euros. Imagine our surprise, not! There was no way that they were going to be picked for a major tournament with the amount of mistakes and ‘questionable’ decisions that they have made not just this season, but in years gone by.

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That should be enough to sound the alarm bells ringing throughout the halls of the Scottish FA, but as usual they will most likely ignore it. They will be embarrassed but are unlikely to do anything about it anytime soon.

Fabio Silva dives inside the Celtic penalty area and cons a penalty from Alistair Johnston, referee John Beaton initially booked Silva for simulation but reversed the yellow card and awarded theRangers a penalty kick after a VAR sent an edited clip for review. Photo Stuart Wallace/Shutterstock

The idea of full time officials has been floated, but that won’t change the ‘quality’ of our officials, as more than a few are blinded by bias towards a certain club. No the idea is simple, either change the way they recruit their officials, ie start recruiting from up and down the country, and not just ones based in Lanarkshire.

Then having officials declare what side they or their family have leanings towards, like they do down south and around the world.

Another idea is to bring in foreign officials to oversee the big games, that would then let our homegrown refs free to do other games without the inconvenience of the pressures of being ‘accused’ of bias. It would no doubt improve their skill set.

That’s all sensible ideas though, and as we know the powers that be that oversee our game are anything but sensible. Allowing Crawford Allan to do his worst in his last weeks in the job as Head of Referees is a classic Scottish FA error.

19th December 2021; Hampden, Scottish League Cup final, Hibernian versus Celtic: Referee John Beaton

After theRangers lost to Motherwell at Ibrox theRangers supporter on VAR duties at Tynecastle – John Beaton – did everything in his power to negate that shock result the day before. And from his point of view it worked. Brendan Rodgers ended up with his first ever touchline ban in his managerial career for calling Beaton ‘incompetent’ and since then Beaton is getting to more Celtic games that our season ticket holders.

He had the whistle in the recent Glasgow Derby and somehow Celtic committed more fouls that day than any team playing in the Scotland or England that weekend. Hardly surprising because the home side kept falling over ahead of contact and Beaton blew up every time.

He gave a penalty after checking heavily edited VAR footage that didn’t show Alistair Johnston touching the ball and Celtic have yet to get an answer from the Scottish FA on this matter.

John Beaton – Photo Malcolm Mackenzie PSI

And come Saturday 25 May – Crawford Allan’s last day as head of referees – the first ever Glasgow Derby Scottish Cup Final is bound to be refereed by John Beaton with Andrew Dallas on VAR duties.

But they won’t be at the expanded Euros, with many more participants and more games needing more match officials – but NONE will be from Scotland. No Celtic supporter will have been surprised by this news but the Scottish FA should be embarrassed, to say the least.

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