Lionel Messi Receives Unique Purnell Spherical Tourbillon Watch After Claiming 7th Ballon d’Or Award

This evening, all eyes in the soccer world were on Paris as the winners of the 2021 Ballon d’Or awards were announced during a gala prize-giving ceremony held at the French capital’s Théâtre du Châtelet.

Since its inception in 1956, the Ballon d’Or has been regarded as the most sought-after individual prize in football. Initially a European-only affair, the annual awards were eventually expanded by organizers France Football to recognize the best soccer player in the world during the calendar year, voted on by international journalists, national team coaches, and their captains.
 

This evening, Paris Saint-Germain and Argentina maestro Lionel Messi picked up the men’s prize for an incredible seventh time, while Barcelona and Spain midfield ace Alexia Putellas claimed the women’s award, her first such accolade.
 

Since it was founded in 2006, Purnell has only ever made tourbillon wristwatches. But five years ago, the Geneva-based brand took its tourbillon offering to another level when it unveiled what has been dubbed the world’s fastest triple-axis tourbillon the Spherion.

The Spherion has an inner cage that makes one full rotation in eight seconds, a secondary cage that takes 16 seconds to make a rotation, and an outer cage that rotates in 30 seconds. All done in the quest of improving the watch’s chronometric rate by averaging out positional errors due to gravity.
 

Developed by Eric Coudray (master of the multi-axis tourbillon and designer of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon), this spherical tourbillon design features eight Incablocs to help protect the triple cage and 3 Hz balance wheel within from shocks. It has also appeared before in Purnell’s Escape Primo WPM and in a spectacular double format as part of Purnell’s Escape II series of timepieces.
 

The movement in question is the 245-component Caliber P10 with a 50-hour power reserve supplied by two visible, manually-wound mainspring barrels that feature engraved text commemorating the new owner’s Ballon d’Or triumph and evokes the values shared between Purnell, Coudray, and France Football.

As for the indications, hours and minutes are displayed on a smoked sapphire sub-dial via hand-polished hands and hand-applied indexes, both gilded, while the power reserve indicator at 9 o’clock functions using a suspended, mobile cone mainspring “sensor.”