SCOTLAND could play in a game where the video assistant referee system (VAR) is used for the very first time when they take on Mexico in a friendly international at the Azteca Stadium here in the early hours of tomorrow morning.
The Mexican Football Federation (MFF) have asked their Scottish Football Association (SFA) counterparts for permission to use VAR in their penultimate warm-up match before the Russia 2018 finals and have been given the go-ahead.
VAR will be deployed for the first time at the World Cup finals later this month and Mexico manager Juan Carlos Osorio is keen for his side to experience exactly the same conditions as they will have against Germany, South Korea and Sweden.
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The host nation's final warm-up game on home soil before Russia 2018, which will be watched by a sell-out 87,000 crowd, will be refereed by Costa Rican officials and the MFF are awaiting confirmation they can use VAR.
Alex McLeish, the Scotland manager, is firmly in favour of video replays being utilised in order to get major decisions correct and believes this experiment may help his team in a game that will be played at high altitude and in searing heat.
“They are going to use it in the game against us,” he said. “We’re going to have to get used to it. I think it’s going to be part of football’s future, unless it goes horribly wrong in the World Cup.
“If it’s for the betterment of the game then great. We don’t want referees to be running scared so that decision-making becomes much more difficult for them. If VAR can play a positive part in the game then why not?
“It’s used in other sports. Football is more constant so you wouldn’t want there to be too many disruptions over every single thing, so that we’re stopping to dispute throw-ins and getting VAR out for that. We don’t want it to become farcical.
“It’s for potentially massive decisions, massive moments in the game, it’s not to be pedantic or over-scrutinise things. It’s got a role to play if it is done right.”
McLeish added: “It could help us in a game like this in Mexico where maybe players will need a break. I don’t know what course the game will take, whether there will be any water breaks or anything, but we certainly hope that VAR is only going to work in our favour in the game.”
FIFA have selected 13 dedicated VAR officials for the World Cup finals and regulations which came into place yesterday will enable them to alert the referee to any off-the-ball incidents he has missed and send a player off at any stage during a match.
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McLeish, the former Motherwell, Hibernian, Rangers, Birmingham and Aston Villa manager, admitted there had been numerous occasions during his career in the dugout when the system would have helped him.
“There have been loads across the years,” he said. “I remember when I was at Motherwell and Brian Laudrup beat about six men and Gazza ran ahead about five or six yards of him. It was passed into his path to tap it into the net.
"How that wasn’t offside I’ll never know. And there have probably been other more important ones than that.”
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