Look closely at a football referee’s wrist during a match and you’ll often spot not one but two watches strapped side by side. It’s not a fashion choice — it’s a functional backup system.
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Why Do Football Referees Wear Two Watches?
One watch is the official match clock
The primary watch tracks the running time of the match itself — the 45-minute halves, stoppage time, and overall match duration the referee is responsible for keeping accurately, since it directly determines when the referee blows the final whistle.
The second watch is a stopwatch for delays
The backup watch is typically used to time specific stoppages within the game — an injury being treated, a substitution, time-wasting, or a VAR review. The referee starts this second watch the moment play stops for one of these reasons and stops it when play resumes, giving an exact count of time to add back at the end of the half as stoppage time.
Why not just use one watch for everything?
Because a referee can’t pause the main match clock without losing track of true elapsed time, and constantly starting and stopping one watch for every delay would make it easy to lose count. Running two watches in parallel means the referee always has an accurate running match time on one wrist and a precise, restartable “how much extra time do I owe” tally on the other.
Is this required by the rules?
The Laws of the Game don’t mandate exactly how a referee times a match — some competitions now rely on fourth officials or electronic boards for added-time tracking — but the two-watch method remains a common, low-tech, reliable backup that doesn’t depend on any external equipment working correctly.
Why Do Football Referees Wear Two Watches? The takeaway
The two watches on a referee’s wrist aren’t a quirky habit — they’re a simple, dependable system: one clock for total match time, one stopwatch for tallying up exactly how much stoppage time needs to be added back.
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