He shoots! He scores! TAG Heuer and Longines aim to prove it.

True, Hublot signed up for the last World Cup, and the next, and any number of high-end brands have associated with the stars of the game – Hublot aside, Tissot has a long association with Michael Owen and Audemars Piguet has Lionel Messi on its books - but official timekeeper status, the technical end if you will, has usually gone to the utilitarian likes of Seiko and Casio.

As The Guardian reports today (Friday 28 January), however, it seems that world football organisation FIFA has finally acknowledged that the world has moved on since Stevenson’s Rocket. Longines and TAG Heuer will be among the bidders to supply new goalline technology to assist referees in deciding whether or not the ball has crossed the line.

This has become a bit of an issue recently. The last, error-strewn World Cup in South Africa featured a wrongly disallowed England goal against Germany that some thought might have heralded a glorious comeback for the lads, though, let’s be honest, it would probably only have encouraged the Germans to score more. Whatever, you can’t have good goals being disallowed because a lardy defender blocks a referee’s view.

Longines and TAG Heuer, of course, are no strangers to sport. Each has a long and distinguished sporting history, especially in mano-a-man disciplines like motor racing, tennis and skiing, and has produced men’s watches and women’s watches inspired by the sporting world.

Indeed, TAG’s latest anniversary boast is that it has been 'mastering speed for 150 years', from which it is surely a short step to “saving Fifa’s face for the next 50”.

What both brands also do, of course, is turn out reliably handsome and finely worked timepieces as both have shown over the last month.

TAG Heuer, for instance, has just released the beautiful Carrera Mikrograph, a limited-edition chronograph in rose gold with a new in-house movement and a name, and style, that harks back to the days when Heuer was flying solo.

Longines, meanwhile, is also going retro, with a 24-hour watch based on the model it designed specially for Swissair pilots in the mid-1950s. It comes with a hand that circles the face in 24 hours and a case-back that pops open at the touch of a button. Fifa, with its dodgy ethics, loopy president and subterranean public approval ratings, can only benefit from the assocation.