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The Premier League is back underway, but before we get into the meat of it, last night’s Professional Footballers’ Association Awards in Manchester was a chance to recap last season. Declan Rice, midfielder for all-conquering Arsenal – and sort-of-conquering England – was named in the PFA Team of the Year for the third time in a row. It’s extremely justified recognition for one of the hardest-working sportsmen around. However high your step count is, Declan Rice’s is higher.
Posing for a GQ-exclusive portrait at the awards, Rice gave us a good look at the watch he was wearing. Black tie means something sleek and dressy, right? Maybe a Patek Philippe or Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso with a shiny gold case? Right? Wrong. The big man went for a Richard Mille, the RM 55-01 in white quartz. The model was only released in April, but Rice clearly secured the bag speedily, as he also wore it on a yacht during his summer holidays a couple of weeks ago.
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Composite: GQ / PFA Awards / Sam Lort, Richard Mille, Wrist Aficionado
But with black tie? Maybe this does actually make sense if we stop and think about it. The monochrome palette of white, black and grey aligns with his monochrome fit. This RM, a refresh of a classic 2012 model made with the American golfer Bubba Watson, is stripped-back even by the brand’s standards, with an openworked movement suspended in the middle of the case; in the space around it, there’s a clear view right through the dial. That, plus the fact it’s a manually wound movement, basically gives the watch an unorthodox kind of dressiness: no gold or jewels or fancy complications, but a restrained, minimal design that – and this is certainly not true of all Richard Milles – can slide neatly under the cuff of a dress shirt.
If something in your brain is saying “I’ve seen this watch before” – well, you have. Erling Haaland, another Premier League main character, wore the same model, in the same colour, during his own hols last month. Did he inspired Rice to get involved? Possibly. Given the watch is hovering around £500,000 on the secondary market, there is certainly a rather limited pool of people, many of them elite footballers, who are able to buy it. “Footballer wears a Richard Mille” is hardly a story to stop the presses, but “footballer wears a Richard Mille with black tie, and it kinda slaps”? That’s something to pay attention to. Rice might have racked up a simply absurd amount of game time recently, but he’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve. In this case literally.