Furious SFA employee Clarke hits out at VAR call

Steve Clarke has hit out at referee Tobias Stieler after he watched Scotland hammered 4-1 by France in a friendly last night in Lille.

The scoreline could have been much higher if France had moved out of third gear against opponents that included Liam Kelly, Nathan Patterson, Jack Hendry and John Souttar.

After taking a surprise lead through Billy Gilmour Scotland found themselves trailing 2-1 heading towards the break when the French were awarded a corner.

From the delivery there were about three fouls committed by despairing Scotland defenders but it took a VAR call to bring the issues to the attention of the match referee.

Eventually Kylian Mbappe sent his penalty past Kelly to put the French 3-1 in front with Clarke telling The Sun how unhappy he was with the VAR decision:

The third one which probably kills the game was a really soft penalty decision.

I don’t know why VAR has to get involved. I don’t know why the referee isn’t strong enough to say ‘I’ll stick with my original decision’ which was to let play go on. And then it is difficult.

There was one more French goal after the break as Scotland lost their third successive match with matches next month against Georgia and Norway giving them the chance to stop the rot.

The SFA has quietly dropped their demand for a UEFA explanation over Scott McTominay’s disallowed ‘goal’ against Spain.