After defeating Argentina in the World Cup final, players from Spain returned to their hotel in Montclair, New Jersey, where they expected more than forty pizzas. The order exceeded $1,200 and was made in advance, when you still did not know if the team would have spent the world champion night or finalist defeat.
Spain won a few hours before the New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, the name used by FIFA for MetLife Stadium. The final ended 1-0 after the extra time, with a goal of Ferran Torres at 106o minutes. It is the second male World Championship won by the Spanish national team, after that of 2010. During the tournament, the team had only one goal in eight games, the lowest figure ever recorded by a world champion.
The dinner had been prepared by Bagels By Jarrett, West Orange restaurant serving bagels, pasta, sandwiches and pizzas especially through retirement and home delivery. The venue is less than eight kilometers from the MC Hotel in Montclair, where the Spanish delegation had stayed in the days before the final. To host it, the Bloomfield Avenue hotel had been booked entirely.
According to the receipt shown by the owner Jarrett Seltzer, the order included 15 simple pizzas to tomato and cheese, 15 daisies, 10 pizzas to Buffalo chicken and an unspecified number of pizzas to pepperoni salami. Seltzer, who is 44 years old, personally prepares fried chicken and spicy sauce used for the Buffalo version. The restaurant had begun to show on social media the preparation of the order already before the game.
The request came from the chef responsible for the MC Hotel, who knew the restaurant through a regular customer. The same contact had given Seltzer another order related to the World Cup: on 5 July Norway had asked twenty pizzas after defeating Brazil in the quarterfinals. In that case the main request had been abundant with pepperoni; one of the pizzas had peppers, onions, raw garlic and jalapeños cut into cubes. According to Seltzer, Norwegian players ate 18 in 25 minutes.
The Spanish Football Federation has not publicly confirmed the content of the dinner: the details available come from the owner of the restaurant, who told the story to the New York Times, and from the receipt of the order. The menu, however, had already been decided before the kick-off. The goal of Torres has transformed a scheduled delivery for the after-party in the dinner of the new champions of the world.
Hello? Yeah, we’re the World Champions. Is it forty pizzas? It’s from IlNewyorkese.
