Celtic should have had a penalty at Fir Park, SFA’s Review Panel decides

The Scottish FA has released details of the Key match Incident Review Panel Outcomes and of particular interest to Celtic Supporters are two incidents at Fir Park at the weekend…

The first relates to the penalty incident in the first half when Daizen Maeda was challenged in the box, fell forward with his hand hitting the ball before it ended up in the back of the net. The panel agreed that it was a correct decision to rule out the goal for handball, and pretty much everyone agrees with that.

However that seemed to be the end of it and while Sky Sports were reporting that the Celtic bench believed that the Japanese forward had been fouled and that Celtic should have had a penalty, no further action was taken.

That has been found to have been the wrong outcome with four of the five panel members believing that Celtic should have been awarded a penalty kick. Here’s the text from the reported outcome:

“After a lengthy discussion on the incident, the majority (4:1) of the panel deemed that this should have been identified as afoul by the on-field Referee and an on-field review should have been recommended by the VAR when the penalty was not awarded.

“As the goal was correctly ruled out for handball, the majority of the panel (4:1) felt the penalty should have been awarded as this offence occurred before the handball.”

“One panel member felt the decision not to award the penalty-kick was correct and that no interventions required.

“The panel also noted that, in line with VAR protocol, VAR could not advise on any sanction for the offending player during a potential OFR, which must be decided by the Onfield referee.”

“On the decision after a VAR review to turn the yellow card (issued to Motherwell defender Liam Gordon) to a red, the panel was unanimous that they agreed with the VAR intervention and the subsequent decision to upgrade from a caution to a red card.”

So Daizen Maeda joins Kyogo in having this season been denied a penalty kick that should have been awarded. Had there been fan media at Celtic media conferences we could have asked about this.