About Riccardo Saponara’s watch collection
Riccardo Saponara is an Italian professional footballer born on 8 December 1991 in Piacenza. A technically refined midfielder, he has built a career across several Serie A and Serie B clubs, including Empoli, Fiorentina, Genoa, Spezia, and La Spezia, earning a reputation as a creative, intelligent player capable of operating across the attacking midfield line. He currently represents US Lecce in Serie A, where his close control, passing range, and reading of the game have continued to make him a reliable presence in the Italian top flight. While he has never claimed a major international cap, Saponara has been a consistent figure in Italian football for well over a decade.
The Riccardo Saponara watch collection, based on sightings documented here at Watch Paparazzi, points firmly toward Rolex — and not the obvious, entry-level side of the catalogue. Saponara has been spotted wearing a yellow gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona reference 6263, complete with a bakelite bezel and champagne-toned chronograph registers. This is a pre-Daytona-hype vintage piece produced from the early 1970s through to 1988, driven by the hand-wound Valjoux 727 movement, a column-wheel chronograph calibre respected by collectors for its mechanical integrity and tactile operation.
The ref. 6263 in yellow gold with a bakelite bezel is not a watch you stumble across casually or pick up without doing your homework. It sits firmly in the territory of considered vintage collecting, where condition, originality of the dial, and bezel integrity drive both value and desirability. For a footballer in his early thirties to be wearing this rather than a contemporary ceramic-bezel Daytona suggests a genuine interest in horological history rather than brand recognition alone. It is the kind of choice that collectors notice — and it earns Saponara considerably more credibility on the wrist than the typical podium of modern sports luxury.