Welcome to Watch Guy Watches, GQ’s monthly curation of high-end timepieces for the true watch nerds among us.

Last week, I was invited to the Richard Mille boutique on Rodeo Drive to check out an as-yet-unreleased watch that, frankly, I had zero desire to hold in my hand.

Not because it wasn’t cool—believe me, I wanted one. It was more the fact that handling a complex mechanical object worth nearly $2 million makes me kinda nervous.

So, what does $1,940,000 get you in a watch these days? In the case of the RM 41-01 Tourbillon “Soccer,” it quite frankly gets you one of the most compelling chronographs I’ve ever seen in the metal, or, in this case, the Dark Blue Quartz TPT. If you’ve never heard of a “soccer timer,” it’s exactly what it sounds like: In the heyday of the mechanical chronograph, brands including Heuer, Omega, and Breitling made watches that were calibrated to track a soccer game’s dual 45-minute halves. Much like yachting timers, they were colorful by virtue of necessity, using different hues to demarcate specific amounts of time (15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.) within their chronograph totalizers.

Courtesy of Richard Mille

Courtesy of Richard Mille

The RM 41-01 takes things a step further (several steps, actually) by adding a suite of features that only Richard Mille could bring together in a single watch. Not only does the chronograph have flyback capability with central minutes and seconds totalizers, but there’s also a tourbillon—great for improving chronometric accuracy while you’re waving a giant flag in the ultras section—and two special soccer-related features. The first, a patented “match-phase indicator,” advances a small revolving display at 9 o’clock with each reset of the flyback chronograph to track the game (1st half, 2nd half, 1st overtime, and 2nd overtime). The second, visible at 5 and 11 o’clock, is a special goal tracker: Activated via the pushers on the right side of the case, it counts upwards to eight along a horizontal scale, allowing the wearer to keep score at a glance.

This being a Richard Mille watch, everything is turned up to 11. For one, the maison spent five years developing a brand-new hand-wound movement made from Grade 5 titanium, with dual column wheels, a 70-hour power reserve, and all sorts of protections against shock and magnetism (crucial if things get rowdy in the stands, or—heaven forbid—you accidentally drop it on the floor of the Rodeo Drive RM boutique). Finally, it’s skeletonized up the wazoo, leaving many of its 650 components on full view via the sapphire dial and caseback.