Conte and Gerrard pour fuel on ketchup wars in tasty cultural divide within football | Jonathan Liew

The sauce is a source of enduring obsession and furious debate in football – and speaks to our confusion as a nation

As with most wars, nobody can really trace the origins of English football’s enduring obsession with ketchup. Perhaps, like many things, it only really began to mean something when someone threatened to take it away. Battle lines were drawn. Sides were taken. Occasionally hostilities would subside, perhaps for years, before roaring back into life. And yet even seasoned observers of the ketchup wars can scarcely remember a week as bitterly contested as the last.

It all began with Antonio Conte’s appointment at Tottenham, when reports began to emerge that the new manager had immediately banned ketchup from the club canteen. “To be professional means you have to take care of your body,” Conte explained. “The training and the game is only the final part of your work. You have to prepare your body, your mind and also your heart.” Within a matter of days, the new Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard had followed him on to the frontline. “The players have to have the right mentality,” he said. “Go above and beyond. They need to strive to be elite.”