Gordon 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.