The Sports Section: This Soccer Stars New Goal? To Become A Watchmaker

May 31, 2021

Given the familiar, broadly sad pallor of video chat, the appearance of the technicolored Dreifuss family on my screen takes a moment to compute. Three smiling, gently-pixelated faces pop up, issuing a chorus of cheerful hellos. In the middle is the bespectacled Daniel Dreifuss, founder of the Swiss watch brand Maurice de Mauriac. Hes come dressed in a wooly orange cardie, knitted green scarf, and a Comme des Gar?ons tee. To his left and right and with their fathers arms draped around them are Massimo and Leonard, his adult sons. Hes beaming. Theyre beaming. They seem genuinely pleased to see me. Not quite as toothy, but adding more than a little color of his own as he joins the call is their current apprentice, Stephan Lichtsteiner. Lichtsteiner, 37, retired from professional soccer last August after a glittering 20-year career. He played 108 times for Switzerland, appeared at three World Cups, and racked up 16 major trophies, including seven Series A titles with Italian giants Juventus. In Switzerland and beyond, Lichtsteiner is a superstar. And now hes a watchmaking apprentice at a bijou Zurich watch company. My first life was as a footballer, Lichtsteiner says, reflecting on a journey that took him to France and England, as well as Italy, and that ended last year. But being a footballer, you have a short career. You need to be ready that it will be over. Of course I miss it, but I have to find the second chapter now. I cant help but ask whether he has the temperament for the finicky business of micro-mechanics. Lichtsteiner, a wing-back who covered so many miles on the pitch that fans called him Forrest Gump, was known as a fiery character, never one to back out of a tackle. Former FIFA referee Jonas Eriksson once described him as one of the most unpleasant players I have met. I was not the calmest on the pitch, Lichtsteiner admits. But Stephan on the pitch and off the pitch are two completely different people. Outside Im a calm guy. On the pitch, I did everything to win. With watchmaking, in the end, the details are the same. To win. To make the watch work. If thats the parallel, and it seems a generous one, surely the differences are enormous? Well, yes, he says with a dry smile. On one side you work with the foot, the other with the hand. Stephan Lichtsteiner at work Lichtsteiners apprenticeship began in March, following a chance meeting at a private members club during a lockdown hiatus last fall; he was a member and the Dreifusses were visiting speakers. Daniel, in what I can see is his usual uninhibited style, approached him and asked him about his future plans. He continues: I offered Stephan a traineeship if he was bored. So it started like that. Over a period of about half a year, Lichtsteiner will spend around three months learning the ropes, with time off for his kids summer holidays. Hell learn how to assemble a watch. How to work with suppliers. How to market a watch. How to sell a watch. The works. Im not the guy who does things with his hands at home, he says, with a gentle shrug. But Im surprised. Even at the beginning it was not so difficult to put things in the watch. Its coming through training, like football. Learning by doing. During his apprenticeship, hell also make a watch. His will be a version of Maurice de Mauriacs Bauhaus-inspired L3 sees red, a piece with a red domed sapphire crystal that made the Challenge Watch prize shortlist at last years GPHG. The one-off will be signed and auctioned for a charity yet to be announced. The watch, he says, is like the second chapter of my life. News of Lichtsteiners appointment made front-page news in Switzerland. Tall, athletic, handsome, and a family man, he enjoys pin-up status in his home country. Leo loved Lichtsteiner enormously, says Daniel of his football-mad son. He was his personal idol.Even so, Leonard, now 25, says he was surprised by the response to the apprenticeship. We never thought of how big it would be, he says. People from Colombia, China C they write from all over the world to get his signature. To us, hes now more a friend and a colleague. But other people are so nervous when they meet him. They come up to him when were walking the streets and cant even get a sentence out. The Dreifuss "watch bros" The benefits of working with a former captain of the national side might now be obvious, but the Dreifusses insist that wasnt the plan. They ran an application process. We had lots of applications, but we chose Stephan because he was the most motivated, says Massimo, 28, who with his brother recently took over the day-to-day running of the company so their father could retire (a loose concept in Daniel Dreifusss case, it appears). Theres something endearingly Wes Anderson about all this (an impression reinforced by some of the companys deliciously bonkers Instagram posts), and indeed its hard to think there are many Swiss companies with the imagination to bring in an elite sportsman as an apprentice watchmaker. Daniel registered Maurice de Mauriac in 1997. After a career in banking that had taken him to New York, he returned to Switzerland and established his company in Zurich, finding its name in his love of alliteration and the names of the 16th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne and Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Fran?ois Mauriac. The company was offbeat from the get-go. It made a name for itself offering personalization with a clever and highly unusual bezel-changing system that meant customers could routinely update the look of their watch. The Dreifusses, who finish each others sentences so routinely its hard to know who said what, laugh about it now C the patented system was invented to accommodate the fact that at the time they couldnt afford to bulk-buy multiple case styles. The brand also experimented with color, and in particular colorful straps. They tell me that today they have around 2,000 straps crafted by an Italian partner ready to go, a few hundred of which appear to be hanging on the wall behind the trio as we speak. That wall is in their atelier on Zurichs Todistrasse, a well-heeled street that wends through a district known for its private banks and galleries and thats only a few minutes walk from the chi-chi boutiques of the citys famous Bahnhofstrasse. As they pan the camera round, I spot the workbench where Lichtsteiner has been photographed, and Daniels esoteric concept, the Table University. This, I learn, is where he shares coffee and stories with his visitors, and collects personalities. When the time comes, its also a place to sell watches. They tell me on average they sell a couple a day, three in four over the table and the rest online.Every watch brand is doing customization now, Leonard says, at pains to emphasize how pioneering his dad was 25 years ago. My father was one of the first; you could say what you really wanted, and hed make it. Back then, customization wasnt even a word. It seems hes a pioneer again, although none of this unlikely crew seems sure where their arrangement goes from here. People ask me why I havent stayed in football, says Lichtsteiner, who has yet to decide whether to invest in Maurice de Mauriac. I dont want to spend my whole life in the football bubble. Robin Swithinbank is an independent journalist, writer, and regular contributor to The New York Times International, Financial Times, GQ, and Robb Report. He is also Harrods' Contributing Watch Editor. Photos by Sven Thomann