Watch Paparazzi

Football manager Andrea Pirlo spotted wearing Patek Philippe

Andrea Pirlo, the former Juventus and Italy midfield maestro turned football manager, was spotted wearing a Patek Philippe World Timer reference 5131G-010 — a piece that demands as much attention on the wrist as Pirlo himself commanded on the pitch. The sighting is entirely consistent with a man whose entire public persona is built around quiet, unimpeachable taste.

The Patek Philippe 5131G-010 is built around the manufacture's Calibre 240 HU, a self-winding movement measuring just 3.88mm in height thanks to its peripheral 22-carat gold mini-rotor — a signature Patek engineering solution that maximises dial visibility while maintaining automatic winding efficiency. The movement offers simultaneous display of all 24 world time zones via a rotating city ring and 24-hour day/night indicator, all correctable with a single pusher at 10 o'clock. The 39.5mm case is rendered in 18-carat white gold, a choice that keeps the reference cooler in tone and allows the dial to command full attention.

That dial is the 5131G's defining achievement. Patek Philippe produces the cloisonné enamel world map in-house, a process involving hair-thin gold wire partitions filled with powdered mineral glass, fired multiple times at over 800 degrees Celsius. No two examples are precisely identical. The oceans are rendered in a deep, luminous blue achieved through successive enamel layers — a technique that connects the 5131 directly to 19th-century Geneva enamelling traditions. Introduced in 2012, the 5131 series replaced the earlier 5130 and established itself immediately as a reference point for serious collectors.

For Pirlo, the choice is revealing. He has consistently gravitated toward pieces that reward knowledge rather than broadcast status — a disposition entirely at odds with the louder tastes of many contemporaries in professional football. The 5131G sits in Patek Philippe's World Time family alongside the yellow gold 5131J and the highly sought stainless steel 5131P variants, but white gold remains the connoisseur's choice for this dial colourway.

At official retail the 5131G-010 carries a list price above $60,000, though authorised dealer access is effectively non-existent, pushing grey-market premiums significantly higher. Demand for any enamel-dialled Patek Philippe reference has strengthened consistently over the past decade, and the 5131G shows no sign of softening.