The FC Porto coach, then 33 and the youngest manager to win a European competition, became Franck Muller's football ambassador in 2011 and received a 33-piece Casablanca Chronograph in his name.
Source: Worldtempus, Click Tempus, Visão
The story · Since 1986
The Franck Muller story
- 1986 Working alone and making three or four pieces a year, Franck Muller regularly presented world premieres from 1986: a tourbillon with jumping hours in 1986, a tourbillon with minute repeater in 1987 and an inverted tourbillon perpetual calendar with minute repeater in 1989, all registered under the Franck Genève brand.
- 1992 The Cintrée Curvex, a tonneau case curved in three dimensions, became the new brand's signature. Sirmakes says he picked it from Franck's archive, where it existed as a single piece made for a wealthy Italian client, because nothing like it was on the market and it showed off the partners' case-making skill. Italy and Japan were the first markets to respond, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong after the brand's first Geneva salon.
- 2003 Unveiled at the brand's own World Presentation of Haute Horlogerie, the Crazy Hours scatters the hour numerals around a Cintrée Curvex dial; a jumping hour hand leaps to the right numeral each hour while the minute hand turns normally. Franck Muller says the idea came to him on a New Year holiday in Mauritius.
- 2005 Franck Muller marked Sporting Clube de Portugal's centenary with the Long Island Sporting CP 100, the start of a partnership with the Lisbon football club that later produced a Vanguard Sporting Clube de Portugal 111, a Cintrée Curvex Sporting CP Remember 115 (2021) and a Vanguard Sporting CP National Champion 2023-2024 edition.
- 2009 Franck Muller and Vartan Sirmakes hand-delivered the first Aeternitas Mega 4, a Westminster grande sonnerie with 36 complications and 1,483 components, to American collector Michael J. Gould at a ceremony in Monte Carlo on 7 November 2009. Christie's later offered piece No. 1 (ref. 8888 T GS CC R QPS E) as the most complicated wristwatch made to that date.
- 2011 Newly appointed ambassador André Villas-Boas, who had just become the youngest coach to win a European competition with FC Porto, got his own limited edition: a black PVD steel Casablanca Chronograph with blue numerals and his signature, numbered x/33 for the age at which he won.
- 2011 Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson launched the Reggie Jackson Collection with Franck Muller in New York: two centre-seconds models and a 25-piece titanium chronograph in Yankees blue with his number 44 replacing the 4. Jackson says he chose the hands, colours, number and the black-and-gold version.
- 2012 Franck Muller dedicated a seven-piece Perpetual Calendar Bi-Retro Chrono CR7 to Cristiano Ronaldo, in an oversized Cintrée Curvex gold case with a diamond-set 7 on the dial and the player's silhouette and signature engraved on the back; Ronaldo said he already owned four or five Franck Muller watches.
- 2019 Watchland, the 1905 mansion in Genthod that houses the manufacture, gained two more buildings of about 16,000 square metres in total, after two built around 2000, bringing design, case making, assembly, engraving and after-sales onto one property.
- 2020 Sports car driver Bill Auberlen, chasing a record 61st IMSA win, partnered with Franck Muller on the "Race to 61" Vanguard Racing editions in BMW Motorsport colours, 61 numbered pieces of each of three versions; he says he helped design them. In 2021 the brand presented the US-only Vanguard Racing Skeleton Bill Auberlen in rose gold, carbon and blue titanium.
Firsts and innovations
2004. Franck Muller calls the Revolution 3 the very first tri-axial tourbillon in the world: three cages turn once a minute, once every eight minutes and once an hour, with about 10 days of power reserve.
2007. Presented after five years of development, the Aeternitas Mega is described by Franck Muller as the most complicated wristwatch in the world, with 36 complications, 1,483 components and a perpetual calendar on a 1,000-year cycle; Christie's catalogued the Mega 4 No. 1 as the most complicated wristwatch produced to that date.
2011. The brand says its Giga Tourbillon has the biggest tourbillon ever fitted in a wristwatch, a 20 mm cage that fills half the dial.