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If you’re not an Arsenal fan, then your Gooner friend, colleague or lover has probably (definitely) filled you in: after a 22-year drought, the club has won the Premier League. North London is red, etc etc; notable supporters Anne Hathaway, Spike Lee and Zohran Mamdani are 100% in ecstasy. What about the players themselves? It’s their moment more than anyone else’s, and they haven’t been shy about savouring it. 5am this morning outside the Emirates stadium, Eberechi Eze, Bukayo Saka, Jurrien Timber and Declan Rice were among those milling about and soaking up the delirious mood.
Eze, who played for the club as a boy before returning this season, put up a celebratory Insta post which included an Arsenal-branded bottle of water, in cheeky homage to the team finally not bottling their campaign for some silverware. Some other important (though not quite as important) news for him this week: on Monday, he was unveiled as a Casio G-Shock ambassador. And he didn’t waste any time with it – in that celebratory pic outside the Emirates, he wore a DW-5600RL-1ER.
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What those numbers and letters translate to is a model that hews closely to the very first G-Shocks released in the '80s, when the extent of their durability was their main selling point (one early ad had the watch surviving being slapped around as a hockey puck). Since then, the bulky stylings of many G-Shock models have made them proper fashion statements, with the likes of Central Cee cooking up their own collaborative editions.
It’s the obvious watch brand for Eze. He’s clearly not one of those footballers who love diverting large chunks of their Premier League salaries into six-figure Audemar Piguets and Richard Milles. For his Arsenal signing last year, after all, he wore a green £20 Casio. This G-Shock has chronograph and perpetual calendar functions in a £100 package, roughly 0.1% of the price of mechanical watches with the same capabilities.
G-Shock’s rugged aesthetic, designed to withstand the knocks and bumps of everyday life, also feels very appropriate for a guy who was let go of Arsenal aged 13, then released from contracts by Fulham, Reading and Millwall before he was 18, but has now fought his way back to his childhood club just in time for its own monumental comeback. You don’t accomplish that if you shatter – or bottle it – in stressful situations. Is an Arsenal-red Eberechi Eze G-Shock inbound? It’d certainly fit the moment.