From Barca trial to El Bulli: Ferran Adria on his Cruyff dream

Ferran Adria wanted to be Johan Cruyff. Before he became one of the world’s most celebrated chefs, football was his first passion, according to an interview with The Athletic via www.nytimes.com.

As a teenager, he played defensive midfield for CE L’Hospitalet, where he grew up on the outskirts of central Barcelona. Adria even had a trial at Barca. He imagined a future for himself in the game and “wasn’t even interested in cooking.”

Then his coach told him he could probably make it to the fifth division, but would never be a great player. That verdict, delivered to a boy who dreamed of organising a midfield, might have ended the story there.

Instead, it reshaped it. “I learnt something very important,” Adria tells The Athletic of that time. “Things aren’t always what other people say they are, and you can work to change that, but it’s important to be pragmatic.”

The boy who wanted Cruyff’s role ended up orchestrating something else entirely. For 25 years, Adria was the creative force behind El Bulli, the restaurant in Cala Montjoi near Roses on Spain’s Costa Brava that massively influenced modern gastronomy.

A trial at Barca did not lead to the Camp Nou pitch. But it set Adria on a path where he would eventually share a dinner table with the man he once idolised from the stands.

FROM MIDFIELD TO EL BULLI

For 25 years, Adria orchestrated El Bulli from its cliffside perch in Cala Montjoi near Roses on Spain’s Costa Brava, a stretch of Catalonia that became synonymous with culinary reinvention. The restaurant did not merely serve food; it dismantled expectations, massively influencing modern gastronomy across the globe.

Adria was recognised everywhere, yet he chose to close El Bulli in 2011, while it was still at the top. It was an extraordinary end to an extraordinary career — particularly for somebody who never intended to become a chef at all.

The irony is that stepping away from football and turning to cooking brought him closer to his idol. The boy who could not break through at Barca’s trial found himself at dinner tables with the very man he once watched from the stands.