Soccer referee in Uruguay game tests electronic cards

A referee raised a phone-sized electronic device to caution a player during a Uruguayan cup match this week, replacing the familiar flash of a yellow card with a digital screen in a trial aimed at modernizing one of soccer’s oldest rituals.

Match official Eduardo Varela used the device during Nacional’s Copa Uruguay match against Rentistas on Thursday, testing a system designed to simplify referees’ administrative work by recording disciplinary decisions digitally.

“We are looking to bring technology to the only thing in football that is still analogue,” said Mauro Sacco, director of REFe, the company behind the project, in an interview with Uruguayan radio El Espectador Deportes on Friday.

The idea emerged more than three years ago when Sacco and fellow director Diego de la Pena watched a match in rainy conditions and considered how referees recorded cautions by hand before transferring the information to digital systems.

The new device logs match incidents with timestamps, with developers aiming to streamline the submission of official records to the Uruguayan Football Association’s COMET platform.

For Varela, the new tool was comfortable to use and its software responded quickly, although he acknowledged that it lacked the drama of the traditional gesture.

“You lose a little of the magic of the quick card, but I think it is something that will help us a lot, especially with the administrative side,” he said.

The first real-world tests have also exposed a problem: visibility. An earlier trial was abandoned because sunlight made the screen difficult to see, while spectators and television viewers struggled to distinguish some decisions during Thursday’s match.

“It’s a project with room for improvement. It looked much better live than it did on TV. The challenge we face now is to improve it for the whole audience,” De la Pena said. “The yellow card has to be yellow, the red card has to be red, and it has to be visible to people at the ground and on television.”

The developers are exploring changes, including LEDs around the device, to make the colors clearer to spectators.

Sacco said the brand had been registered, and the hardware and software patented, with the developers based in China.

The trial has drawn mixed reactions online.

“We have seen all kinds of comments, positive and negative. We have even laughed at the memes,” he said.

“The important thing is that people are talking about it. Any innovation takes time,” he added.

REFe hopes to refine the technology and eventually see it adopted by South American governing body CONMEBOL and world soccer’s FIFA.