Gordon Ramsay on Beckham’s risotto and what he cooked for Pele on eve of a World Cup final
British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay Photo: The Athletic; design: Eamonn Dalton
ExclusiveGordon Ramsay on Beckham’s risotto and what he cooked for Pele on eve of a World Cup final
By James HorncastleJune 24, 2026 12:15 am EDT UpdatedGordon Ramsay might as well be reading out the starting XI of the greatest team of all-time. He knows if off by heart, running through the line-up as if they played only yesterday. Instead it’s a menu. Specifically one he cooked on July 11, 1998. It’s the night before the World Cup final in Paris and Ramsay is in the kitchen at the Chateau de Versailles. He has been asked to cook a banquet for 2,000 people. At first the request elicits trademark Ramsayian profanity.
The anecdote calls to mind what happened to Francois Vatel, the Ramsay of his day, when he received a similar commission from Louis XIV in the 17th century. The service broke him. A late seafood delivery left Vatel so distraught, legend has it he pulled his sword and took his own life, dying “for want of lobster sauce”.
This, in time, would become a French idiom for “some trifling disappointment, pique or wounded vanity”. Ramsay had no plans to become the Scottish equivalent. “When they said it’s for 2,000 guests, I thought: ‘You’ve got to be kidding me’,” Ramsay huffs. “I wasn’t interested. But then they mentioned the guest of honour.”
It wasn’t French royalty. It was the football equivalent. Pele. O Rei.
“I’m there!” Ramsay tells them. “I’m in, man.”
Why I love the beautiful game with Gordon RamsayJames Horncastle and moreNearly three decades have passed but speaking to The Athletic for our Why I Love The Beautiful Game series, Ramsay still remembers every dish he oversaw at the pass that night. Menu items that could be goalscorers from the legendary green and gold side Pele played in at the Azteca in 1970.
“It was a French-inspired beautiful asparagus salad. Something light, something fragrant, something easy to digest,” he recalls effortlessly. “The fish course was a beautiful sea bass pan-roasted but served with a light, fragrant fish-top seasoned with Madagascan vanilla. After that we had a beautiful filet mignon with girolles a la creme and for dessert — I’ll never forget it — a chocolate fondant with a milk chocolate ice cream.”
Far from broken by it, Ramsay says: “I never wanted it to end.”
At the close of service, Ramsay asked Pele if he would sign a Brazil shirt for him. The three-time World Cup winner left more than an autograph. “He was trying to write the menu on the f***ing shirt,” Ramsay laughs. “‘Don’t worry about that. Just: “To Gordon”. It’s fine!’.” The shirt now hangs in a frame in Ramsay’s garage.
Ramsay with Pele at an event in 2017 (David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images)Assisting the game’s first global superstar was one thing. In 2006, Ramsay then found himself chasing down an actual one from Pele’s first rival in the Greatest Player of All-Time debate.
It’s 2006 and Ramsay has been chosen to play in the Soccer Aid charity game. As a Scot, he is captaining the Rest of the World team against England. “I still think back to standing in the tunnel at Old Trafford,” he remembers. “Hands on my shoulders. I’m looking left, I’m looking right and Diego Maradona’s tapping on my shoulders, asking me am I ready? I’m like, ‘What the f***’. Even from a professional footballer’s position it was unique.”
Training sessions were put on to get the participants up to speed and Ramsay, keen to make an impression, over-exerted himself. “We met two weeks before kick-off. Everyone gets excited. Then Maradona turns up. We get more excited and everyone gets injured. I had a slight tear in my adductor so I couldn’t turn but I could go in a straight line and I started running out left. I saw he received the ball and I looked up. He looked at me and even before I started running the ball was mid-flight and it was just…”
There. On a plate, as they say.
“I sped up. I didn’t want to let him down,” Ramsay says. “I got control of it, turned the defender inside out and got taken down outside the penalty area. It was just a beautiful moment, a moment that I’ll treasure the rest of my life because for the first time in my career, it helped fill the gap of what I didn’t get from playing soccer.”
Ramsay with Peter Schmeichel and Maradona at Soccer Aid (Terry George/WireImage)The first dream Ramsay followed was to become a footballer. He believes he could have gone pro. In his telling, he got close, agonisingly so. Michelin stars and idiot sandwiches only came later. The first F-word he knew wasn’t blue at all. It was full-back.
“My hero as a natural left-back was Stuart Pearce.” The player known in English football as ‘Psycho’. “An absolute hard-a**. No one got past him.” Ramsay’s roots may be Scottish. He still has family there. His aunt and uncle ran a paper shop in Glasgow. But he grew up in Oxfordshire. “I started playing at county level. I was at Banbury United, then I had trials for Oxford United,” he recalls. “I got spotted in an FA Youth Cup match and invited up to the incredible Ibrox stadium by way of a scout.”
Rangers. The club his relatives support. Ramsay’s club.
“It all came crashing down very quickly with a horrific knee injury,” he says, sorrowful. “I smashed my cartilage and tore my cruciate ligament in my left knee. I was on the scrap heap at 18. It was a big blow. I was gutted, cried my eyes out. I couldn’t believe it.
“It was my mum who said: ‘You need to get yourself together, dust yourself down, come back stronger’. So, in many ways, it was a second bite of the cherry when the cooking started. I was determined to get to the very top without being stopped by anybody.
“Tail between the legs, I went back down (to England) and, for me, it was even harder then because the players I was playing with at Rangers were all breaking through. Ally McCoist was just making his debut for Scotland and I’m peeling f***ing shallots in a banquet kitchen, cooking for 400 people. It hurt.”
McCoist broke through in the Scotland national team (SNS Group via Getty Images)Ramsay had to let go. The Ibrox marble staircase. The Rangers blazer he wore with pride. He swapped them for chef’s whites and shifts in the kitchen at the Paris Mint. “That upset helped me more than I could ever imagine because it kept me driven, focused and constantly searching for that level of perfection,” he says. “Three Michelin stars was the wish list. That was the pipe dream. I lost myself in France. I disappeared to Paris and put my head down.”
In cooking terms it was like leaving the Scottish Premiership for the Premier League.
“At 22 I worked with some of the best chefs on the planet from Guy Savoy to Joel Robuchon. I staged at several restaurants for nothing. You garnered knowledge. You got skill for nothing.”
Not only did the experience come in handy when he won his first Michelin star as the head chef of Aubergine in London in 1994, but it also helped when he returned to the football pitch for another Soccer Aid game, this time at Wembley.
Ramsay again wore the captain’s armband. Again he led another of the game’s legends out on the pitch. On this occasion, it was Zinedine Zidane, the man of the match in the 1998 World Cup final, the sphinx-like Frenchman who upset Pele’s stomach the day after his meal at the Chateau de Versailles.
Ramsay describes Zidane as “like a ballerina on the ball” and adds: “I was the only one who could speak fluent French with him because the other players were from all around the world. He was a little bit subdued and the minute I spoke to him in French, he lit up and we’re sort of best friends.”
Only for 90 minutes or so.
In real life, Ramsay does count Sir David Beckham among his besties. They have, in many respects, followed the same blueprint, maximising their brands and transcending their industries. On the one hand, Ramsay fancies himself as a footballer. On the other hand, Beckham thinks he can cook.
“Unfortunately, David Beckham is a very talented chef,” Ramsay happily acknowledges. “Even towards the end of his career, playing in Italy, he’d finish training in the morning and then send me these beautiful videos and pictures of his risottos from a culinary school in Milan. I said to him: ‘You’ve got too good. I’m not even going to cook for you anymore because man you know your s***!’
“We have the most amazing time when we talk about food and wine. That kind of indulgence in small doses is perfect. Understanding how to match a great wine with a great risotto. Understanding how to cook an amazing pasta. David is a self-confessed perfectionist and if he’s going to cook, he wants to make sure that he is a bloody good cook. And he is.”
Ramsay and Beckham watching an NBA game (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)Speaking of risotto, Ramsay can’t believe Italy are missing a third consecutive World Cup. Another of his most vivid football memories comes from the summer of 1990 when the Italians were hosting the World Cup and made it to the semi-finals, where Argentina in Maradona’s adopted city of Naples, knocked them out in a shootout.
“I was on the pass at an incredible restaurant called Le Gavroche in London,” Ramsay says. “Michel Roux Junior was such a kind chef he allowed us to watch those penalties on the hot plate. We’re in the middle of service, standing there, crying our eyes out when those balls went over.”
Cuisine-wise, he thinks this is a hard World Cup to call, at least when it comes to who, among the co-hosts, is the best. Ramsay is arguably bigger in the U.S. than he is in the UK. But his loyalty is to his tastebuds.
“That’s a tough one,” he concedes. “It’s like asking who is your favourite kid. I spent the most amazing time in Oaxaca. I thought I understood Mexican cuisine… no, I got my a** handed to me on a plate when I went to live and stay in Oaxaca. I thought I knew and I didn’t know jack-s**t until I spent time in Oaxaca. Man, they schooled me. They really schooled me.
“So that’s a tough one, isn’t it? Because the Canadians are incredible. The produce is off the charts. When you look at places like BC and Victoria and you think of what’s going on in Vancouver. It’s just an incredible restaurant scene.
“And then you think of the East Coast, the U.S. It’s a powerhouse. And then the Texas side. Whoever is landing in Texas are going to be absolutely schooled by some of the best barbecue Texas-style restaurants anywhere in the world. But I would say ME-XI-CO. Absolutely! 100 per cent!”
Now that the tournament is underway, Ramsay is eager to see how his beloved Scotland get on. He can watch them with less regret than when McCoist won his first cap while he was busy chopping f***ing shallots.
Ramsay visited the Scotland training camp at the World Cup (Maddie Meyer/FIFA via Getty Images)“It’s been a long time coming,” Ramsay says. “Nearly 30 years since we’ve been in the World Cup. But I’m excited for the fans. I’m excited for the New Yorkers to see 5,000 jocks running up and down Fifth Avenue with a kilt and no f***ing underwear. God help them all. I hope they like ginger.”
Despite his busy filming schedule, Ramsay visited Scotland’s training camp in Boston and still plans to go to a few games over the next month. His passion for the game is as strong as ever even though, at 59, he could be forgiven for thinking he has completed football.
“Honestly, from a chef’s point of view, having David as a best mate, having played with Maradona and having cooked for Pele; f*** it, I’m done.”
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