The digital red and yellow card arrives / an Android gadget to change football refereeing!

In an innovative move, Uruguayan football used electronic cards instead of yellow and red paper cards.

According to Sport Se, Uruguayan football took a progressive and unexpected step towards the digital world and showed an innovative move to the football world in the match between Nacional and Rentistas, which has been noticed. In this match, Eduardo Varela, who was the referee in the middle of the game, instead of using yellow and red paper cards, started an interesting evolution in football refereeing by holding an electronic smart device that turned yellow or red by him. Electronic cards instead of paper cards!

This technology was tested in the match between Nacional and Rentistas in the last 16 of the Uruguay Cup. Showing the first card in the history of this system happened in the twelfth minute of the match. Varela took out the electronic device from his pocket after Juan Pablo Pelada's foul on Maxi Silvera by Rentistas' player, and by touching the screen, he took the full yellow screen in front of the offending player's eyes.

This tool goes beyond a simple color palette. The innovative device of the Uruguayan company "Refe" has two special buttons for yellow and red cards, and the referee will have the desired color on the screen immediately after pressing them. But this is not the whole story. In the next step, the system provides the possibility to select the team and number of the wrong player, and the report of the violation will be recorded by the referee in the same system. The interesting thing is that if a player receives a second warning, the software automatically warns that this player has already received a yellow card and asks the field judge if he intends to issue a red card and send him off. In this way, the forgetfulness of the referees, which happened many times before, will be forever added to history.

All the events of the game, from cards and substitutions to goals, penalty kicks and even correction of the referee's decisions after reviewing the scenes by the video assistant referee, are recorded in a database that is directly connected to the referee's handheld device. It is also possible to record a voice message for a detailed explanation of the reason for the disciplinary penalty.

Explaining the purpose of this project, Varela stated that, contrary to public perception, the main focus is not to speed up the game process, but to dismantle the time-consuming process of manually writing information with a pencil on the back of traditional cards and to eliminate administrative bureaucracy.

This 148-gram gadget is only seven millimeters thick, developed on the basis of the Android operating system, and does not require an Internet connection to operate on the ground. In the future, the data of this device will be directly synchronized with the Uruguayan Football Federation's tournament management system, and the details of the events will be provided to the media immediately.

Of course, the current version has some challenges. The first test of this device was supposed to be in the match between Defensor and Plaza Colonia, which was canceled due to the strong reflection of sunlight and the difficulty of distinguishing colors, and in this match, the color clarity from the platforms was not very good. That's why the referee suggested installing a light strip around the screen to improve the visibility of the spectators and TV cameras.

This three-year project has been carried out without financial burden for the federation and with the investment of the private sector. Although Eduardo Varela admits that quickly pulling a traditional card out of a pocket still has a different visual thrill for football fans, showing the first ever digital red card to Nacional's Nahuel Glus in the final minutes of the match was no different from showing a classic red card, showing that the classic red and yellow may be fading into memory sooner than expected.