Uruguay's referees are ditching plastic cards for a screen, and it's not going smoothly. The Uruguayan Football Association is trialling a digital carding system — a handheld device with two buttons, one for yellow, one for red — and the biggest issue so far is that nobody can tell which is which.
The first attempt had to be abandoned entirely. The trial was planned for a Defensor Sporting vs Plaza Colonia Copa match in late September, but poor lighting made the colors on the screen impossible to distinguish. So they pushed it back, tried again during Nacional's 3-0 Copa Uruguay win over Rentistas on Thursday — and ran into the same problem.
The tech is clever, the visibility is not
The concept has genuine merit. The device automatically logs cautions, send-offs, and substitutions in real time, pushing the data directly to COMET, the AUF's digital management platform. No paperwork delays, no transcription errors, no disputed records after the fact. For league administrators, that's a meaningful upgrade.
But a refereeing tool that players, coaches, and fans can't read from a distance isn't really functional yet. The whole point of a card — physical or digital — is instant, unambiguous communication. Yellow and red need to be distinguishable from 40 yards away in floodlit or afternoon glare. Right now, that's not happening.
- The device has two buttons: one for yellow, one for red
- It transmits data in real time to the AUF's COMET platform
- Visibility in different lighting conditions remains the core unresolved issue
- Two separate trials have now flagged the same problem
The AUF has acknowledged visibility as a key area for improvement, which is a polite way of saying the system isn't ready. When the same flaw shows up across two separate trials in different conditions, that's not a quirk — it's a design problem that needs fixing before this goes anywhere near a high-stakes fixture.
The digital card stays in testing for now. How long that phase lasts depends entirely on whether engineers can make a screen legible in a football stadium. Turns out that's harder than it sounds.
