Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo recently collaborated with jewellery and watch designer brand Jacob and Co. on a series of ultra-luxurious watches. The footballer continues to make headlines on and off the field following his departure from Manchester United, United Kingdom, his participation in FIFA 2022, the Louis Vuitton photoshoot with the iconic Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi, his latest foray into the digiverseーthe CR7 NFTs for Binance and now, the luxury co-branded watches. As a personalised version of the Epic Xーultra-modern skeletonised watch design by the brand, Jacob and Co. x CR7 Epic X collection eases into being a crowning identity for both legendary powerhouses.

The launch of the collaborative collection comes as no surprise owing to Ronaldo's close accord with Jacob Arabo, the founder of Jacob and Co., for over 20 years. The duo decided to celebrate the footballer’s tremendous success and the timekeeper’s aesthetic elegance through two pieces - titled Flight of CR7 and Heart of CR7 - with a promise of expanding the collection in the future. Marking an opulent identity, the watches are designed with a 44mm case superimposed with X-shaped lugs, a smooth, diamond-set bezel and a subtle coloured crown and flange. Powered by Jacob and Co’s symbolic high-quality JCAM45 calibre, each of the ultra-luxury watches hosts two vertical pillars as the representative designators of Cristiano Ronaldo and the CR7 brand.

The heavily mechanical dial side honing the brand's signature skeletal style hosts the two pillars with signed engravings on the right pillar and Ronaldo's iconic postures on the left one. While it is being said that one of the two engraved postures portrays his final lash-out at Manchester United, the pillar captures Ronaldo’s resplendent and supremely iconic header goal from 2013 that the footballer scored for Real Madrid CF. The other engraving illustrates Ronaldo’s celebratory hand gesture befitted in a skeleton barrel cover fabricated as a football.

The watches are designed in vivid shades of red and green that beautifully pay homage to the primary colours of the Portuguese flag. The Flight of CR7 version is rendered in a subtle shade of red with the lugs, case and bezel in a smooth rose gold finish and also with a bezel set of 26 baguette-cut white diamonds. The case back for both renditions of the Flight for CR7 watch displays a red mineral crystal with a gold print of the five times Ballon d’Or winner’s celebratory ‘siu’ move. The strap is finished in a black Cordura strap and a red lining on an 18k rose gold buckle. The second watch from the much-fabled series is in an opulent shade of green with structural elements in stainless steel. Just like the first watch, the case back of the Heart of CR7 watch has a similar look designed with the contrasting green mineral crystal and a silver print of Ronaldo’s lively move. The strap for the watch is in a green honeycomb rubber strap on a stainless steel pin buckle.

Just as the Portuguese footballer ventures further into the design world, he parallelly announced the launch of the Cristiano Ronaldo NFT collection for Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange platform. The multi-year digital art collection comprises seven animated statues with four rarity levels: super super rare, super rare, rare, and normal, each with its perks. The NFTs celebrate the meteoric rise of the great player through years of football.

Ronaldo has set the bar high by collaborating with the iconic watchmakers, while the watches retail at a whopping range of $28,000 to $145,000, it is a collectable asset that extravagantly captures the footballer’s iconic moments from the beautiful game. Essentially, the distinctive design credibility that Jacob and Co. attest each of their watches with, is a glorious testament to the precision and finesse of watchmaking as an art.