Ebel's Football Fantasy Expands to Real Madrid

With apologies to Hublot, whose football tie-ups range from the World Cup to Manchester United, there is perhaps no watch brand that has made such a public commitment to the people’s game. Why, they even have a ‘football strategy’ outlined on their website.

Ebel boss Marc Michel-Amadry was in Madrid last month to present Jorge Valdano – Real’s general manager as well as a World Cup winner with Argentina and a football writer-cum philosopher of some note – with one of its limited-edition Real Madrid watches.

In doing so, he was consolidating both the relationship and a strategy that seems to be working: identifying a top club, hugging it close, and sealing the deal with a limited edition watch, in this case, a 500-item edition of its 1911 Tekton model, complete with 48.5mm titanium case, black skeleton dial, and Real’s blue and gold trim. The watch is accompanied by a gushing encomium to the club on the Ebel website and multiple links to the Real Madrid site.

Real may be the biggest but it is not the first club to have accepted the Ebel embrace. The Swiss watchmaker has been cherry-picking top clubs around Europe for some time, from Ajax in Holland to Lyon in France to Germany’s Bayern Munich. It also has Arsenal and Rangers in the UK.

But its football cred rests on more than celebrity endorsements. It also claims to have developed the first mechanism to measure ‘football time’, with a chronograph feature dubbed the ‘245’ caliber that measures two 45-minute periods and extra time where necessary.

The limited edition models are also numbered, logoed and equipped with an oscillating weight in the shape of a football. It’s not exactly win at all costs, but you get the impression Mr Mourinho might approve.