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footballerSpotted November 2022

Footballer Mehdi Benatia spotted wearing a Richard Mille

footballer Mehdi Benatia spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM11
Who & what: Richard Mille RM 11-01 Felipe Massa Flyback Chronograph Titanium – Mehdi Benatia

When Mehdi Benatia arrived at Juventus, he brought more than defensive solidity to Turin — he brought one of Richard Mille's most technically layered sports watches on his wrist. The Richard Mille RM 11-01 Felipe Massa in titanium, worn here on a clean white rubber strap, was photographed during the period surrounding the defender's signing, offering a clear view of the brand's signature tonneau case and fully skeletonized dial.

The RM 11-01 Felipe Massa is among Richard Mille's landmark references. Its calibre RMAC2 movement is an automatic flyback chronograph with a GMT second time zone and an annual calendar — a combination of complications that, in a case measuring roughly 50mm × 40mm and just over 16mm thick, represents a serious feat of miniaturized engineering. The movement runs at 28,800 vph and delivers approximately 55 hours of power reserve. The titanium case, chosen for its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, keeps the overall weight manageable on the wrist despite the watch's bold proportions.

The Felipe Massa collaboration was one of Richard Mille's earliest and most enduring partnerships, running from the mid-2000s through Massa's Ferrari years. The RM 011 family — later updated to the RM 11-01 and RM 11-03 — became a collector cornerstone, appreciated precisely because it stacks three major complications (flyback chrono, GMT, annual calendar) in a single integrated architecture. The titanium iteration is considered the purest expression of the reference: no added gold or precious stones distract from the engineering narrative.

Benatia, a Moroccan international with stints at Roma, Bayern Munich, and Juventus, has consistently projected an image calibrated to the elite tier of European football culture. Choosing an RM over the more predictable Rolex Daytona or Audemars Piguet Royal Oak signals a specific kind of connoisseurship — one drawn to motorsport aesthetics and material innovation rather than traditional prestige codes.

On the secondary market, the Richard Mille RM 11-01 titanium trades with notable resilience. Retail was listed at approximately £88,000 in the UK market at time of sighting. Grey-market values have historically hovered near or above retail, reflecting Richard Mille's deliberately constrained production volumes and the reference's crossover appeal among sports, motorsport, and luxury watch collectors.

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