Football is a highly competitive sport and to make yourself known as a great football player requires a lot of hard work, passion, and talent. This physically and mentally demanding sport requires players to take good care of themselves: from what they eat and how much they exercise to being in a good mental state to handle pressure. But this doesn’t mean that football players cannot have hobbies – as a matter of fact, it is advised – and spend their free time well.
For some renowned footballers, cooking or baking is the preferred hobby. Whether they have been doing it for some time and it is only now being revealed or recently discovered this passion, they are extremely good at it. Famous names in the football industry worldwide, such as Lionel Messi, Virgil Van Dijk, are interested in cooking delicious meals or baking cakes.
Here’s a list of some of the footballers with this fantastic hidden talent and their respective focus areas:
Kevin De Bruyne: baking
Maybe you find it interesting that the star footballer of Manchester City, Kevin De Bruyne, is a passionate fan of The Great British Bake Off. But who’s to say that this is an unusual match? The well-known football player not only watches this famous British television competition between bakers, but he is also doing this activity in his free time and enjoys it a great deal. Kevin de Bruyne has been showing his skills to his teammates from Manchester City and sharing his baked goods with them.
Virgil Van Dijk: cake baking
Another great professional footballer who bakes cakes in his free time is Virgin Van Dijk, the caption of the Netherlands team and one of the best defenders at Liverpool. Before becoming a star in football, Virgil worked as a pot washer in various restaurants, where he probably had picked some cooking skills. Now he is baking delicious cakes and cooking for his teammates. And who knows, maybe in his retirement years, Virgil will start looking at home bakery insurance for his home-based baking business. With his talent, this hobby can quickly turn into a profitable business when he decides to retire.
Lionel Messi: cooking various meat
The Argentinian professional football player, Lionel Messi, is widely known and has been appraised for his skills and talent throughout his career. Little did you know that Lionel Messi’s talents are not only related to football, but the footballer is skilled in the kitchen. His specialty is cooking meat, and if you take a look at his Instagram posts, it looks incredibly delicious.
Daniel Sturridge: spicy chicken and baklava
The English professional footballer Daniel Sturridge is good at cooking spicy chicken and making baklava. Indeed, it is a combination you wouldn’t expect one to know. However, his mother Grace has taught him everything he needs to know about preparing a tasty spicy chicken, her favorite dish. When he moved to Turkey in 2019 to join the Turkish sports club, he learned how to prepare baklava, one of Ottoman cuisine’s most famous pastry desserts.
