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Manchester United know who to call when the manager’s seat suddenly goes empty: former player and captain Michael Carrick. He stood in for three games as caretaker manager in late 2021 – two wins and a draw, thank you very much – and is now two games into his second spell as temporary head coach, to last until the end of the season. It’s been an auspicious start: a 2-1 win over local rivals Manchester City followed by a 3-2 smash and grab against Premier League top dogs Arsenal. Two games do not a season make, but still – Red Devils fans are happier than they've been in years.
Peeking at Carrick’s wrist tells us that those two big wins have aligned with two big watches. Some managers favour a low-key watch game – Chelsea’s Liam Rosenior and Liverpool’s Arne Slot are both Datejust men – but Carrick, as per his penchant for the occasional (usually deadly) tactical flourish on the pitch, has allowed himself a smidge more flair.
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For the City game, and in the announcement photo when he took the job, Carrick strapped on a very special Rolex Daytona – no, not quite as special as Paul Newman’s very own, but pretty damn close. This is a “Shades of Blue Challenge Project” Daytona, created by high-end watch customisers Artisans De Genève. As per the name it is resplendent in a few blues: a lighter electric shade on the sub dials, and a midnight blue on the bezel and dial. The colour scheme is not only rarer-than-rare, but softens the overall impression of what is quite a rugged watch. The irony of wearing a bit of light blue to beat the light blues is a nice bonus.
Carrick then pivoted from ice-cold classicism to something ultra-technical: yes, that big, bold tonneau shape on his wrist during the Arsenal game was a Richard Mille. Not just any Richard Mille – a blacked-out RM011 Black Phantom, of which just 50 have been made. As well as some standard fancy-pants design choices like an exposed skeleton dial and annual calendar feature, it also includes what’s called a flyback chronograph, a type of stopwatch complication that can be reset much more quickly than the usual kind. Highly unlikely that Carrick is using this to keep track of how many minutes are left in a half, but the option is very much there for him with this watch.
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Which is all to say that this is a very high-performance beast – about as high-performance as Carrick’s United team seems to be shaping up to be. A combination of down-the-line excellence (as per his Daytona) and out-there trickery (as per this Richard Mille) makes for a great watch collection, and a great football team. Can Michael Carrick oversee a United renaissance? Too soon to tell. But we’ve seen all we need to know his watch game alone deserves some silverware.