A former star of Manchester United’s treble-winning 1998/99 campaign has gone on to make waves in the culinary world, winning MasterChef and running his own pizza restaurant
A former Manchester United Treble winner is now unrecognisable after winning MasterChef and launching his own pizzeria. Jesper Blomqvist, 51, hung up his football boots in 2010 after a long and successful playing career.
The highlight was undoubtedly winning the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in the 1998/99 season under Sir Alex Ferguson. The Swedish midfielder mainly featured as a squad player in his first campaign at Old Trafford, scoring one goal in 38 matches, before a serious knee injury meant he didn’t play a single game in his next two seasons with the club.
Brief stints with Everton and Charlton followed, as well as several Swedish sides after he returned to his homeland in 2003. Yet, Blomqvist has enjoyed arguably even more success since retiring from football and entering the culinary world, even winning Sweden’s Celebrity MasterChef in 2023.
After his win, Blomqvist wrote on Instagram: “What a lovely competitor I had on the other side of the kitchen table in @karlfredrik.se [television host Karl Fredrik Gustafsson] and what an exciting final it was.
“Even though I knew the result, I got all sweaty watching it on TV. Incredibly happy, grateful and humble for the win, know that you Karl-Fredrik might as well have won, it was an incredibly tough & even final.
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“The whole production has been amazingly funny, educational but also tough. Then it helps to have such awesome competitors, jury members and the rest of the recording team who support, pepper and spurs, thank you all for a wonderful adventure.”
Blomqvist went on to speak about his MasterChef success and admitted he was surprised he managed to emerge victorious. In an interview with Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet, the former Sweden international admitted it was challenging throughout despite already owning his own pizzeria and becoming an experienced chef following his retirement from professional football.
He said: “I felt that there were people who were a little better in terms of knowledge, but I thought the competition itself was a bit difficult. That was what became difficult for them. I go all the way in and then it happens as it happens.”
On the show, Blomqvist was barely recognisable to his former fans, rocking a ponytail without the vibrant blonde hair he was associated with 20 years ago. He opened his own successful Pizza restaurant, called 450 Gradi, just outside Stockholm, Sweden, in 2018.
He told United’s official website in 2023: “I’ve still got that [restaurant] and we’ve just moved to a bigger place. We’ve won a few awards, especially from some Italian organisations and that makes me extra proud, those awards, but the most important thing is the customers keep coming back.
“We had a lot this summer and that was fantastic. That’s the most important thing – awards are here and there but you need to win the game and get people to come back.
“That is, for sure, they’re coming back and it feels great. [My favourite pizza?] Ah well, we have a lot of good ones but the classic Parma, with some Parma ham, Parmesan cheese and ricola, and maybe some extra buffalo mozzarella on top of that. It’s a great pizza!”
It comes as little shock that the “Parma” is up there with Blomqvist’s favourite pizzas, given he represented the Italian club of the same name in the 1997/98 season. A pizza dubbed the “Treble” at his restaurant, should he choose to add it to the menu, would undoubtedly be a similarly huge hit.
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