Gordon Ramsay is asking for a coach. The MasterChef host dropped an Instagram post Wednesday, tagging soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino with a cheeky request to sub him in. He then flipped the real question back to his contestants: were the home cooks ready to feed a squad of hungry kids fresh off the pitch?
“Put me coach @pochettino !!!” Ramsay wrote, adding a soccer ball emoji to drive the point home.
The episode airs tonight, May 28, at 8/7c on Fox. Miss it live and it’s on Hulu the following day.
The Pochettino shoutout is a smart play. Mauricio Pochettino is one of the biggest names in soccer right now. The Argentine manager built his reputation at Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain. He had a stint at Chelsea and now coaches the U.S. Men’s National Team. Ramsay putting himself in the “needs coaching” role instead of the coaching role? That’s a real flip. His entire brand is built on knowing what everyone else is doing wrong. Different energy.
The soccer angle lands at the right time. The FIFA World Cup kicks off this summer across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Fox holds the U.S. broadcast rights. Pochettino’s team is one of the sides competing on home soil. That makes his name a natural pull for Fox’s lineup heading into the tournament. On paper, a competitive cooking show and post-match kids don’t have a lot in common. Both run on pressure and execution, though. Bad results show up fast in either world.
MasterChef has been a Fox fixture since 2010. Ramsay has anchored every season, running amateur home cooks through challenges for a cash prize and the MasterChef title. Co-judges rotate in and out, but Ramsay is always there. He also runs Hell’s Kitchen and hosts multiple other cooking shows across different networks. He still finds time to tag soccer coaches on Instagram. Busy schedule.
Tonight’s challenge sounds like a proper stress test. Post-match kids are a tough crowd to cook for. They’ve been running around for an hour or more, and they don’t care about plating. They care if the food is good. The home cooks can’t lean on presentation here. They need to deliver something that works, fast. That’s a different kind of pressure than the usual MasterChef format.
Pochettino hasn’t publicly responded to the tag. Whether he actually shows up on screen or just got the Instagram shoutout isn’t clear yet. That’s a pretty good reason to tune in tonight.
MasterChef airs at 8/7c on Fox. It streams on Hulu the next day.
