Inside the weird world of Champions League meals: Politics, posturing and lavish presents

Forget the football. For teams involved this week, the Champions League experience begins not with the playing of the famous anthem nor the referee’s whistle, but with clinking glasses and gleaming cutlery in some of the finest restaurants Europe has to offer.

Welcome to the world of Champions League pre-match meals, a relatively unexplored — but often strangely significant — part of the matchday ritual in the continent’s elite football competition. 

They can help clubs strike political alliances, lay the groundwork for possible deals and impress glamorous guests — and occasionally they can go very wrong. The Athletic spoke to multiple sources with first-hand experience of them, many of whom asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationships, to find out how they really work.

Zalacain is a fine dining restaurant in El Viso, one of Madrid’s chicest neighbourhoods. 

The Santiago Bernabeu stadium is just two kilometres away, which helps explain why Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez likes to welcome guests from visiting teams here ahead of Champions League fixtures.

Pre-match meals involving owners, directors and board members tend to be held by other clubs in private settings but in Madrid things are done a little differently. When Manchester City visited the city in April 2024, the Zalacain summit was promoted on Real’s social networks. It is common to have press waiting outside, and though Perez rarely stops to speak, those from other countries can sometimes be more forthcoming.

When Chelsea were in town in April 2023, for example, Todd Boehly — just 11 months into his tenure as Chelsea’s co-owner — gave an interview to El Chiringuito TV, describing his culinary experience before offering a prediction. “Very nice meal, good meal,” he said. “Chelsea is going to win 3-0.”

After Sky asked him the same question, he doubled down. “I have a lot of faith and we’re going to win 3-0 tonight.”

Boehly was accompanied at Zalacain by fellow co-owner Hansjorg Wyss and the club’s director Daniel Finkelstein. When Wyss was asked by El Chiringuito whether Chelsea would win 4-0, he replied, “Of course.”

Successive 2-0 defeats for Chelsea followed, sending them out of the competition. In the midst of a poor domestic campaign, those words — and especially Boehly’s — only served to increase the pressure on an ownership that was widely felt to be floundering in a new sport.

Often, the conversations during these meals are mundane but the context around them provides intrigue, offering reflections of wider relationships. 

Real’s former director general Jorge Valdano tells a story about a lunch with Bayern Munich, where the club’s legendary former striker Alfredo Di Stefano, then the club’s honorary president, left the table in protest when a German colleague suggested Real were in a poor financial state.

More recently, Real and Paris Saint-Germain met in the last 16 of the Champions League in 2022, with relations all but severed over their differing positions on the European Super League (Madrid were in favour of joining, PSG very much not) and the future of Kylian Mbappe, the striker the Spanish club were desperate to sign. 

In the first leg, a meal was scheduled for Monday at the luxurious Guy Savoy, a haute cuisine restaurant close to the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, rated by La Liste as the best in the world between 2017 and 2024 — the 2021 edition was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, PSG altered the plan to Tuesday, with a meal at the Michelin-starred Pavyllon. Real were annoyed by the rescheduling. Though Real CEO Jose Angel Sanchez and other executives were present on time, Perez arrived half an hour later late. PSG were not impressed, and the food was consumed at record speed.

These, however, are the exceptions. Usually, there is a sense of cordiality between even the fiercest of rivals due to the presence of UEFA delegates, which means people at opposite sides of the table are reluctant to speak about shared grievances, or even their mutual interests.

When PSG played Newcastle United in the group stage last season, the club’s Qatari president Nasser Al Khelaifi was sharply aware of the political context given the involvement of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund at St James’ Park. 

Ahead of that fixture, Al Khelaifi called Alan Shearer, the former Newcastle striker, and asked him to book the best restaurant in Newcastle for a lunch that would involve David Ginola, the French winger who represented both clubs. Shearer managed to get them into Khai Khai, an upmarket Indian restaurant just off the quayside. Al Khelaifi wanted to show respect and this led to him visiting the statue of legendary manager, Sir Bobby Robson.

All of this happened in a public space. Some clubs are more cautious, depending on their opponent. While Aston Villa have hosted directors from other clubs in the restaurants of Birmingham, since qualifying for the Champions League for the first time they have used Villa Park as a venue. 

Ahead of Bayern Munich’s visit earlier this season, the pre-match meal was held on the day of the game, ahead of an operational meeting, with Villa’s sporting director Monchi welcoming guests with a speech before the clubs exchanged gifts.

The pre-match meal for Aston Villa and Bayern Munich directors was held at Villa Park (Aston Villa/Aston Villa FC via Getty Images)

As far as English clubs are concerned, the meals increasingly involve employees rather than owners due to the fact that so many are stationed abroad. 

Some of those who were involved in such meetings years ago wonder about the impact of this: the events were an opportunity to build loose relationships. Are clubs and directors now more suspicious of one another because the key decision makers rarely get the chance to meet and talk about things other than football?

This hasn’t always been the case. When Liverpool were under the control of David Moores, he would host dinners at Anfield the night before the game inside the club’s trophy room, mainly because he did not want to travel into Liverpool twice on the day of a game from his home near Ormskirk, some 40 minutes away.

As the years went by, Liverpool increasingly played English clubs in the competition. This led to some complaints about the dinners being held the night before. Directors from other clubs did not want to spend a day waiting around in a city they’d been to many times. Moores disagreed and argued it was still a part of tradition — he still had the UEFA delegation to consider.

Sometimes, travelling parties can try too hard to impress their hosts. On one occasion, Liverpool were playing in Norway. A Liverpool director spent much of the journey reading an in-flight magazine, which included an article about the impact of north sea oil on the Norwegian economy. The director decided to impart some of his newfound knowledge at the subsequent dinner. Having rattled off lots of facts and figures, the man in a smart suit sitting next to him stopped him in his tracks, suggesting he wasn’t entirely correct. He was the finance minister of Norway.

Keith Wyness, Everton’s CEO between 2004 and 2008, vividly remembers the club’s trip to Villarreal in 2005 in the final qualifying round of the Champions League, a game which saw referee Pierluigi Collina controversially disallow an equaliser from Duncan Ferguson that would have sent the tie into extra time. 

Wyness tells The Athletic that the lunch ahead of the game was a short one and Everton’s directors felt like they “couldn’t go back into the boardroom (after the final whistle) because tempers had flared and the feelings were so high”.

“I didn’t know what to do after the game, so I went down to the tunnel area and ended up walking around the stadium because we were furious with the referee’s decision,” he admits. “You’d (normally) have made some friends over the lunch the day before and then wished them well in the next round. But it was pretty nasty in the boardroom.

“We were very much the enemy. It was hostile. Then there was such a bad feeling around the decision and the incident, magnified by how much it meant to Everton, that there was no sporting handshake and pleasant goodbye.”

The controversy over Duncan Ferguson’s disallowed goal soured relations between Everton and Villarreal (Phil Cole/Getty Images)

Wyness remembers another tie against Zenit in the Europa League three years later, when the Russian side invited “one of their top guys from Gazprom”.

“He had a political situation so there was a bit more to discuss. As a sponsor, he had a very strong opinion. He was interesting to get some views from. There’s not always that much to say between club officials.”

The Scot never did a deal over a pre-match lunch but he had more success during a UEFA draw in Monaco, where he was sitting next to Inter’s sporting director. They discussed Andy van der Meyde, the Dutch winger, who ended up being remembered at Goodison Park for the wrong reasons.

Wyness speaks fondly of his experiences at his previous club, Aberdeen, who played a Moldovan side with a president who was also a chief of police. The officer enjoyed whisky and when he travelled to Scotland, according to Wyness, “he was completely hammered for two days”. On the return trip, the officer’s sense of seriousness returned and Wyness was given a guided tour of Chisinau in a police car.

It ended up being his fondest memory of travelling with any team in Europe. “Moldova is famous for its wine, so in the boardroom, we sat down for the pre-match lunch and there were six glasses of wine lined up. They made you drink each one, then you had to sing a song to the other directors,” he recalls. “We sang the Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen. It was so bizarre! The directors of clubs in Moldova tend to be major industrialists. Most of them have football clubs so they’re very powerful people and they’re great to get to know.”

At Everton, the European pre-match meal was always held in the boardroom and the late chairman Bill Kenwright used to invite celebrities.

This was a strategy embraced by Fulham, where Hugh Grant was a regular match-goer. When they played Wolfsburg in the Europa League in 2010, he was introduced to the then Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn at the pre-match meal. In one of two exceptions to the Bundesliga’s 50+1 rule, Volkswagen own 100 per cent of Wolfsburg — likewise pharmaceutical company Bayer AG and Bayer Leverkusen.

Hugh Grant (left) chats to Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn in 2010 (Nigel Treblin/DDP/AFP via Getty Images)

Ahead of the return leg that gesture prompted Wolfsburg to invite Fulham’s travelling party, featuring Grant, to a test track in the middle of a woods, where directors were able to drive whichever car they wanted, including Lamborghinis, Audis and Bugattis.

Sometimes, even where generosity has existed, it has not always been greeted with the same level of enthusiasm. When Olympiacos arranged a seafood meal on a beautiful boat docked in Piraeus harbour before playing Manchester United in the early 2000s, none of the visiting directors turned up. This led to David Meek, the long-serving writer for the local Manchester Evening News newspaper, attempting to save face by doing a speech, pretending to be a director. 

In 2002, when United played Nantes, the French side arranged a civic reception in a chateau for Manchester media and other guests, attended by the city’s mayor. After being treated so well, Manchester-based reporters asked United to organise something in return. After lots of pressure, United agreed.

The venue? A Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip shop off a dual carriageway in Salford. 

United won the match 5-1, but in the wider game of culinary diplomacy, the French club were the clear victors. 

Additional reporting: Gregg Evans, Mario Cortegana Santos, Daniel Taylor

(Top photos: Getty Images; Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto. Additional credit: iStock)