An Android Application for Real-time Referee Observers

Gregorio Bernab

e and Javier Cuenca

Computer Engineering, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

Keywords:

Mobile Applications, Football Match, Observer, Referees, Real-Time.

Abstract:

Football matches are consolidated as the events with the greatest number of followers in the world. These

matches are managed by a group of referees. An observer evaluates the referees by watching the match in the

stadium and making notes about important determinations, including the main right and wrong decisions. We

present an Android application for mobile devices to facilitate the task of the observer, allowing the observer

to pay attention to the game and partially automating the report on referees.

1 INTRODUCTION

The global mobile application market is growing

constantly. The market is dominated by Android

(Google, 2015) and Apple (Apple, 2015). One ex-

planation for this growth is that mobile devices are

almost always with their users, have continuous wire-

less connectivity, and feature increasingly capable

user interfaces. Thus they can serve as ubiquitous in-

put devices and sensors for user reactions, emotional

responses, and opinions at large public events.

Nowadays, huge numbers football matches are

played all around the world, managed by a referee

helped by two assistant referees and a fourth ofﬁcial

(Vogt, 2010) (MacMahon et al., 2014). The complex

work of the referees is evaluated by an expert in real-

time, following the match in the stadium and making

notes about the different situations and times. Once

the match is ﬁnished, the referee observer quickly

analyses the performance with the referees in a suit-

ably quiet place. During the analysis, the observer

mentions the positive and negative points and writes

them in a report. After the match, the referee observer

completes a full report for the referee, the two assis-

tant referees and the fourth ofﬁcial. The format of

the most extended report in Europe is designed by

UEFA (3rd Team, 2014). For the referee, the ob-

server has to mention different sections, like the ap-

plication and interpretation of the Laws of the Game

(FIFA, 2015), disciplinary control, personality, co-

operation with the assistant referees and the fourth

ofﬁcial, physical ﬁtness, general comments and ad-

vice on performance and personality, and a summary

with the referee’s strong points and main keys for im-

provement. The assistant referees’ performance must

be included in the report mentioning some important

decisions including times. Furthermore, general com-

ments on the fourth ofﬁcial must be added.

Currently, in a match the notes are made with pen

and paper, so observers spend a lot of time not paying

attention to the game or referees. The observer has a

watch to control the time, and for each note the time

is registered, as are the originator, and possibly a de-

scription of the action. After the match, the observer

has to make a quick summary to talk through with the

referees, and some details or important decisions may

be forgotten if the incidents are not clearly annotated.

Moreover, the observer spends a long time on prepar-

ing the report.

In this work, we present an application to facili-

tate and partially automatize the observer’s report of

a soccer referee. This Android (Google, 2015) appli-

cation allows observers to take notes while keeping

their eyes on the match. There are several typical sit-

uations or events in a match (foul, goal, penalty, yel-

low or red card, substitution, offside, etc) that can be

stored automatically by the app with inclusion of the

minute, the second, and the originator of the situa-

tion. The notes are sorted automatically, so facilitat-

ing the observer’s task when analysing the match with

the referees. Moreover, if there is a video of the full

match stored in a particular server, the app will au-

tomatically send the different minutes and seconds of

the situations signalled, and the referees and the ob-

server receive the video sequences edited in order to

see the main right and wrong decisions. Finally, the

organized notes facilitate the preparation of the report

on referees.

Bernabé, G. and Cuenca, J..

An Android Application for Real-time Referee Observers.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Sec-

tion 2 describes the design of the application. An

experience on the use of the application is shown in

section 3. Finally, section 4 summarizes the work,

concludes the paper and introduces future work.

2 APPLICATION DESIGN

The design criteria include simplicity, so the observer

can focus the attention on the match, and short-term

usage, because the situations arise quickly and inter-

action might involve stating opinions about the cur-

rent event. This gives the observer the opportunity to

observe quickly past events in the match, thus form-

ing a partial analysis of the performances of referees.

The app is structured in two displays. In the ﬁrst,

the observer inserts the names of the teams, the date

and the time. The second allows the user to store dif-

ferent events of the match related to the referees, as

we can observe in Figure 1. On the upper left of this

display, the time of the match is controlled by an An-

droid chronometer with one button to start the count

of each part and a second button to stop the time. A

switch is used to select between the ﬁrst and the sec-

ond part. In the centre, the observer can include de-

cisions of the main referee (for example fouls of each

team (Falta), yellow or red card for a player (TA or

TR) and the goals (Gol)) just by touching a button for

each situation. Moreover, other speciﬁc actions of the

referee can be selected by particular buttons, as for ex-

ample advantage (Ven), acceleration (Ace) and po-

sitioning (Pos). For each assistant referee, there are

three buttons to save their main activities, such as an

offside (FJ), to allow the game to continue because a

player is not in an offside position and is in line with

the second opponent (No), and a foul near his zone

(Fal). All events can be stored with additional de-

scriptions or comments, inserted by the observer us-

ing an Android EditText. Moreover, all the actions are

saved including the exact instant of the match (minute

and second of each half) plus the player involved. On

the lower left of the display, there is a zone to save

substitutions in both teams (Cambio). In the right

part, the events are displayed, automatically sorted by

goals, yellow and red cards, substitutions, fouls, ad-

vantage, positioning, and other events and actions of

assistant referee 1 and 2. Statistical data are received

by the app from a server. These data include the av-

erage number of fouls, yellow and red cards, goals

and penalties per match for each team. We have used

the default http client from the org.apache.http pack-

age to implement the client-server communication in

Android. This part allows the observer to see a sum-

mary of the main decisions of the referees and the

behaviour of both teams compared with averages of

other matches in one season. The observer can mark

an event, and if the ﬁle with the video of the match

is available in a particular server, the application will

automatically send the different events and the video

sequences are chopped. The data will then be pro-

cessed by a script on the server. Finally, the observer

and the referees will receive several pieces of video in

order to analyse the main right and wrong decisions

in the match.

A further important issue of the application is en-

ergy consumption. Usually, a Samsung Galaxy Tab

10.1 (Samsung, 2015) that is fully charged at the start

of the game has a battery level of about 92% at the

end of the game if the video of the match is available,

taking into account that between two and ﬁve video

sequences are considered per match. This low power

consumption assures to the observer a high level of

mobility and independence.

3 EXPERIENCE

The ﬁrst experience of using the application was with

a group of 30 observers of referees, in Murcia (Spain).

All observers used the app to follow live one match.

After that, they were asked to answer a questionnaire

regarding their level of satisfaction in relation to the

functionality, simplicity, interactivity, usability, reg-

istered information and free comments or suggestions

about their experience. All observers reported that the

app allows a better monitoring of the referees’ task

in real-time because observers keep their eyes on the

game and the decisions of referees. Furthermore, the

analysis of the match with the referees is easier and

referees receive real-time feedback. Moreover, the

observer can complete the report quickly, because the

app organizes the notes. The additional property of

the selection of the main events of the game allows the

referees to observe their right and wrong decisions,

improves referees’ knowledge for the next match and

clariﬁes the performances, so facilitating their inclu-

sion in the report.

4 CONCLUSIONS

We have proposed the ﬁrst Android application to fa-

cilitate and partially automatize the observer’s report

of soccer referees. The app allows observers to make

notes, without losing right of the actions and to store

the minute, the second and the originator of a typi-

cal situation with a simple touch on a button. Typical

Figure 1: Display to store different events of the match related to the referees.

events in a match, like fouls, goals, penalties, yellow

or red cards, substitutions, offsides, etc, can be auto-

matically stored and organized to facilitate a fast anal-

ysis of performances of the referees by the observer.

Important decisions can be marked by the observer

to automatically obtain the desired video sequences.

These properties allow observers to carry out the re-

port on referees more quickly.

Experiences show the app helps observers to keep

these attention on the match, and the different events

are stored and organized automatically, which simpli-

ﬁes the meeting with the referees and the preparation

of the report.

Currently, the app is being tested by a group

of observers to suggest modiﬁcations and improve-

ments. After this phase, the proposed app will be

made freely downloadable from the Android Market,

with monthly updates containing bug ﬁxes and new

features.

We are developing a new property based on the

use of the referee’s GPS. The app receives the po-

sitions and the distance travelled by the referee in

a match, so allowing observers to have a clear idea

about positioning and to advise on possible improve-

ments. The proposed app could be generalized for

other observers or referees of sports like indoor soc-

cer, basketball or handball.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was supported by the Spanish MINECO, as

well as European Commission FEDER funds, under

grant TIN2012-38341-C04-03. We are grateful to the

reviewers for their valuable comments.

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