Premier League footballers using personal chefs to tell them what to eat and when as some of them ‘don’t have a clue’
The latest craze sweeping the top flight is to have private chefs make nutritious meals for them throughout the week
THERE'S a new craze sweeping the Premier League.
It's not crazy hair, custom-wrapped Ferraris or blinging watches - it's private chefs that cost more than £500 a day.
A huge number of Prem stars are turning to professionally trained chefs to come into their homes and cook them healthy, nutritious meals to ensure they are at peak fitness throughout the season.
Some of them have personal chefs in their home because they can't cook themselves.
But plenty of stars believe that getting their dinners cooked by quality chefs not only treats them to a great meal - but actually improves their performances.
The likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Kevin De Bruyne and Harry Kane all swearing by their private chefs.
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Back in 2015, Jonjo Shelvey, then at Swansea, hit the headlines when he advertised for a live-in chef.
It circulated on social media and had a wage of up to £65,000 plus a bonus.
The advert revealed that Shelvey wanted a chef working on a rota basis over seven days.
"As Private Chef you will also need experience and knowledge of sports nutrition, healthy, high performance meals, sports nutrition and well-balanced meals to provide a varied diet," it read.
"You must also have has some previous private chef experience."
Harry Kane enjoyed a record-breaking 2017, beating Alan Shearer's record for Premier League goals in a calendar year with 39.
The Tottenham star revealed in October that he has used a private chef for the past year, which has gone a long way to helping with his success.
"I think, over the last year or so now, I’ve changed a lot off the pitch with the nutrition side of it," Kane said.
"It kind of clicked in my head that a football career is so short. It goes so quickly, you have to make every day count.
"So, I have a chef at home to eat the right food, helping recovery.
"You can’t train as hard as you’d like when you have so many games, so you have to make the little gains elsewhere, like with food."
The England striker added: "I have a guy come round and he explained what you could do, eating the right food at the right times.
"You could eat healthily all week and then carbs [carbohydrates] before a game, and that could make your body go into shock because you’re not used to it.
"I’d never looked too much into it, but when he explained what the body does and how he could help me recover... He helped me in the recovery from the [ankle ligament] injury, with certain foods I was eating. It opened my eyes a bit.
"He’s there [at Kane’s home] every day, Monday to Saturday, and leaves it in the fridge for Sunday.
"I hardly ever see him because I’m at training, but he’ll cook the food and leave it in the fridge.
"We’ve got a good plan going and it seems to be working."
SunSport revealed earlier this year that Pogba had brought over an Italian chef to teach him how to cook.
As well as cooking his meals, the mum-of-one was even instructing the £89million man how to brown off meat and even scramble eggs.
She was also teaching Pogba how to cook more complex dinners.
Messi, Ronaldo and Gareth Bale have sworn by their chefs for years, while Zlatan Ibrahimovic joked that he was going to bring his from Paris to Manchester when he left PSG for United.
The Welshman even revealed that having a private chef helped him adjust to life in Spain after leaving Tottenham.
He said in 2014: "It’s always difficult to settle into a new team and a new country, but I felt as soon as I got into my house and got settled off the pitch everything would get a lot easier.
"It was brilliant when we got our personal chef.
"It’s like going out for a meal every night.
"He makes sure I eat all the right stuff – the vegetables, the fruits, the right types of meat, and prepares it in the right way."
One of the private chefs, Dean Harper, explained that many of the millionaire footballers struggle even the most basic meals, making private chefs not only an athletic advantage but a necessity.
"I have some clients who we send a chef five days a week,” he told the . “Sometimes seven days a week.
"It is footballers who really struggle to get vegetables, different greens and the right carbs.
";Basically, they need telling what to eat and when to eat.
"Some of them just don’t have a clue."
Yuda Galis, who founded personal chef service Galor added: "“It has really grown in the last few years.
"It is mainly Premier League footballers, although we do have others, like boxers, runners and dancers."
Harper even revealed that one unnamed footballer even used him to impress his other half on Valentine's Day.
"He really wanted to impress his missus," he said, "he wanted to show off, I think, but he had really ballsed things up.
"I think I really saved him."
A number of Manchester City stars, Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker, have all started using Michelin star-trained chef Jonny Marsh to start cooking them meals.
De Bruyne was pictured with Marsh holding a number of Tupperware containers with a variety of meals.
He also visits them at home to cook them dinner.
Marsh told the : "They want things like shepherd’s pie. They’re really down to earth."
But it's not the usual shepherd's pie, the players have carrot or swede instead of potato mash and lean turkey rather than fatty beef mince.
He even turned his back on his training to cut out oil, instead using lemon juice and soy sauce as the basis for his dressings, while using a sous-vide water bath to cook meats.
The process produces low-fat meals that are "lean and clean."
Marsh drops off food twice a week to De Bruyne, who he has been working with for more than a year, but is with Gundogan or Walker most nights.
It certainly seems to be paying dividends for Manchester City.