Dries Mertens — watch collection

About Dries Mertens’s watch collection

Dries Mertens is a Belgian professional footballer who built his reputation as one of Serie A's most dangerous attacking players during a career-defining spell at SSC Napoli. Born in Leuven in 1987, Mertens joined Napoli in 2013 and went on to become the club's all-time record scorer, a title that says everything about his longevity and consistency at the highest level. He represented Belgium's golden generation on the international stage, earning over 100 caps and featuring in World Cup and European Championship campaigns. After leaving Napoli in 2022, he has continued playing at elite level, including stints in Turkey and beyond.

The Dries Mertens watch collection, as far as our cameras have captured it, points toward a taste for high-specification Rolex pieces rather than volume collecting. The standout sighting came during Napoli's Champions League match against FC Barcelona at the Stadio San Paolo, where Mertens was photographed wearing a yellow gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference 116508 with a black dial and a black rubber strap. That particular configuration — 18-carat yellow gold case paired with a dark dial — is one of the more sought-after combinations in the modern Daytona range, and pairing it with a rubber strap rather than the matching bracelet gives the watch a sportier, less formal character that fits a professional athlete's lifestyle.

The ref. 116508 runs on Rolex's in-house calibre 4130, a column-wheel chronograph movement with a vertical clutch that the brand developed entirely independently, introduced in 2000 and still regarded as one of the more robust and accurate chronograph movements in production. Beating at 28,800 vph, it offers a reliable platform for a watch that Mertens clearly treats as an everyday wear rather than a safe-deposit-box piece — which, for a footballer spotted in it pitchside during a high-pressure European night, tells you something about how seriously he takes his wristwear.