The England and Arsenal midfielder can do functionality-plus-flair like nobody else – on his wrist as well as on the pitch

I don’t know loads about football, but watching England in the World Cup this summer, I worked out one thing: that Declan Rice guy seems important. I have since been told the Arsenal midfielder is notorious for his on-pitch work rate, and was a big factor in the Arsenal's Premier League win last season. Another big, obvious fact: Rice’s watch collection has a work rate that’s just as high.

What’s in his horological locker? An awful lot. Rice is not that guy who settles on one or two favourites; he makes big acquisitions regularly. None are super left-field choices – they all basically fit into the footballer-watch mould we’re familiar with. But among them all there’s still a pattern we can point to: high functionality with a crucial bit of flair.

Where to begin? Rolex is always a good place to start. There’s a GMT-Master II that Rice wore back in 2022 when receiving the Hammer of the Year award (he was at West Ham at the time). It’s the rare “destro” model, with the crown on the left-hand side of the dial to suit left-handers wearing it on their right wrist. Which is not what Rice was doing – he’s right-handed – but a nice horological wink nonetheless. That seemed to be the catalyst for buying lots more Rollies, namely a special gold Le Mans Daytona and a standard-sided GMT-Master II. He also jumped aboard the Land-Dweller train too.

Another notable Rollie of his is a Day-Date in yellow gold, with an orange carnelian dial and diamonds in the hour markers. It’s about as blingy as this very businesslike footballer gets – but then we have the Vacheron Constantin Historiques 222 he wore in 2024, when he won Premier League player of the year at the London Football Awards. A revival of a classic integrated sports watch design from the 70s, it’s also entirely done in yellow gold. Both this the Day-Date and another icy Day-Date aren’t exactly subtle – but they’re loud in a slightly dressier way. The kind of watches that can go with tailoring as well as an England tracksuit.

Now, we wouldn’t be talking about a footballer’s watch collection if we didn’t have reason to mention Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe and Richard Mille. Rice ticks the box on all three – but again, in a way that riffs on the obvious choice, rather than entirety rejecting it or entirely going along with it. When a lot of Premier League stars come to pick up a Royal Oak, they go for a showy skeletonised dial, and/or a fancy complication like a chronograph or perpetual calendar.

But one of Rice’s Royal Oaks is a slim, 39mm version in platinum, with a gradated green dial – a lot sleeker than your average. As for Patek, yes, he’s got a few Nautiluses (Nautili?), but is also into the marginally less hype-y Aquanaut. It’s a chronograph with only one subdial: a 60-minute counter to go with the orange chronograph second hand on the main dial. Again, a nice twist on what you’d expect.

With Richard Mille, it’s hard to say what the obvious choice would be: you can’t call any of them run of the mill. But Rice has still managed to distinguish himself with, first, the RM 67-01, a super-slim design with oversized numerals, which he wore to lift that much-deserved Premier League trophy in May. He then clearly treated himself to a victory present, because that summer, and later at the PFA Awards in August, he was wearing an RM 55-01 in white quartz: a feather-light, manual-wound design with the movement suspended in the case so you can see right through it. Erling Haaland has worn the watch since its release in April too, while Rice paired it nicely with black tie.

What does this all add up to? The top class of footballers don’t have to tap IYKYK horological artisans to do something different with their watch choices – they can just be inventive within the existing reference points. Which is the story of Declan Rice, really: not reinventing the wheel, just being so reliably good, at everything he needs to be good at, that he becomes indispensable. And that’s as true on his wrist as it is on the pitch.