325: Jordi Masip, Real Valladolid, Panini Adrenalyn XL La Liga Santander 2018/19

In the high days of Match magazine, as well as being able to speculate about Peter Fear’s alternate careers, young football fans were always treated to some insight into their idols’ lives behind the scenes through fairly formulaic interviews. From just one August 1998 issue (thanks to The Premiership Years for this) we learn that Andy Booth would have been game to do a bit of sportswear modelling but not so keen on “anything racey”, Andy Todd felt let down by the Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness” despite liking the singles and Garry Flitcroft didn’t have too much time for Chris Sutton’s personal hygiene and believed his young team mate Damien Duff “was shy until he’d had half a shandy”. Lovely stuff all round.

Modern footballers are far duller. The most insight we get into their lives comes through their heavily edited social media accounts which generally tell us that they’ll “go again” after their most recent disappointing defeat. The decline of the matchday programme also means we get less of these incidental interviews with players. One of the best things I’ve seen in recent years was Crystal Palace’s Damien Delaney revealing that his fantasy dinner party would include Keith Richards, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong and Napoleon Bonaparte. I’m torn between really fancying a pint with the former centre half and anxiously awaiting the announcement that he’s stormed the Houses of Parliament. Dictators for dinner aside I know next to bugger all about the current Palace squad whereas, thanks to these slightly odd nineties interviews, I know that Neil Shipperley’s ideal night in would involve a Chinese takeaway, some Ibiza anthems and cosying up with Denise van Outen to watch some Alan Partridge. Aha!

It came as a pleasant surprise to all of us at A Sticker’s Worth 500 Words therefore when Emlyn messaged us the other day with the 2014/15 Barcelona squad’s post match meal demands. Although such international stars would never reveal these trivial details about themselves on their Instagram feeds this list was a treasure trove of needless information. It proved that Lionel Messi is one of the dreariest characters of all time through his demands for “cheese pizza”. Javier Mascherano is clearly a bit more of a maverick with his request for “pasta salad and two pieces of fruit”. I hope the catering staff went out of their way to surprise the Argentine with ever more obscure items from nature’s bounty (“great performance there Javier, here’s a solitary lychee and a kumquat”). Jeremy Mathieu’s “ham and cheese snack” sounds suspiciously like a Dairylea Lunchable. Shockingly Luis Suarez opted for a “ham and cheese pizza and Caesar salad” rather than some prime cuts of Otman Bakkal, Branislav Ivanovic or Giorgio Chiellini. Sergio Busquets nearly takes the Mariah Carey award for the all caps demands of “ONLY PINEAPPLE AND STRAWBERRY” to accompany his ham pizza but he was outdone by a player who none of us had ever heard of and instantly wanted to learn more about.

During his three years at Barca third choice goalkeeper Jordi Masip made just four appearances, three of which came in the Copa del Rey, and it was not until he moved to Real Valladolid in the league below that he found regular first team football. Nevertheless he made the most of his brief time among football’s glitterati to demand a tuna pizza, a tuna sandwich with vegetables and “peeled sunflower seeds”. Either Masip was going hard in the substitute goalkeeper’s half time ritual of catching some crosses pinged in by the coaches or he was on a one man mission to deplete the world’s tuna shoals but the last item on his menu was what really got us talking in our WhatsApp group. Is Jordi Masip Spanish football’s answer to Axl Rose? Would he demand a delayed kick off if he came across an unpeeled sunflower seed? At what point would Camp Nou have to install a special tunnel directly to the goalmouth that only Masip would be allowed to use? How short might his shorts become over the course of a season?

More likely the levels of micromanagement in the modern footballer’s nutrition meant that Masip’s peeled sunflower seeds were essential for his recovery after sitting on the bench. When you look at some of England’s great footballers from the past perhaps this shift was necessary. The notorious pre-Wenger Arsenal team warmed down with lager and fish and chips or tried to match Steve Bould’s terrifying appetite for Little Chef dinners. Similarly pre-match meals have changed to incorporate oily fish, pasta, spinach and broccoli rather than Alan Shearer’s infamous chicken and beans. Beans on toast were also a favourite for Paul Scholes as well as his night before ritual of eating two Turkish Delights with a cup of tea although that was more superstition than nutrition as it stretched to “always buying a pack of three and leaving one”. His Manchester United team mate Wayne Rooney liked to get prepared for matches with a bowl of Coco Pops as long as they were “the normal ones, not the moons and stars”.

Whether or not Jordi Masip is still adhering to his picky post-match meals he has helped Valladolid to two promotions to La Liga since joining the club and continues to share goalkeeping duties with Sergio Asenjo. Football has come a long way from the days of warming down with a ropey service station roast dinner and ten pints of Carling but the nostalgic in me was very grateful for Emlyn’s discovery of Barca’s stars’ menu. Maybe their financial struggles of late stem from making over 400 of Sergi Roberto’s favoured “triple sandwich with Nutella”. Either way it was a flashback to football’s halcyon days of the nineties and exactly the kind of nonsense that keeps us all in love with the game. We go again.