{"id":9320,"date":"2026-06-05T07:05:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/blog\/?p=9320"},"modified":"2026-06-05T07:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:05:56","slug":"world-football-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hostinger.com\/blog\/world-football-food","title":{"rendered":"World Football Food: 48 countries, 288 recipes, one very hungry football fan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Gray<\/a> is an author, journalist, and brand builder. He’s the kind of person who’s always got three business ideas on the go, and just enough energy to see them through.<\/p>

He’s also a man of two great passions: football and food. Hard to argue with either one. It’s even harder to think of a better combination, and he’s spent the last 20 years proving it.<\/p>

Every time England played, he’d look up what people actually eat in the opposing country, pull something together, and serve it up for friends and family alongside the game.<\/p>

Yorkshire puddings stuffed with pulled pork for England vs USA? Yes, please. A homemade Iranian stew for a random Tuesday night qualifier? Absolutely.<\/p>

It was never anything formal, never planned as anything more than a fun excuse to eat well and watch football.<\/p>

But the idea of turning it into a proper cookbook had been rattling around in his head for years. He just never had the right moment, the right tournament, or the right tools to make it happen.<\/p>

Then the 2026 FIFA World Cup started taking shape, and like an eager substitute in stoppage time with a chance at glory, Will’s moment had finally arrived.<\/p>

The biggest World Cup ever, and a publisher who said no<\/h2>

The 2026 tournament is the first to feature 48 nations, hosted across the USA, Canada, and Mexico. For Will, it was now or never.<\/p>

“I knew it was going to be a big tournament, the biggest World Cup ever,” he says. “I thought, if I’m going to do it, I’ll do it for this one.”<\/p>

So he pitched it. He found a traditional publisher before Christmas and put together proposals, flat plans, sample page spreads, the whole package. They loved it.<\/p>

Then they came back in January and said no.<\/p>

Their reasoning made sense. A traditional print run means committing to thousands of copies upfront, and with a 200-page full-color book, printing isn’t cheap.<\/p>

On top of that, the final eight qualifying teams didn’t lock in until late April, leaving barely two months before the tournament. For a traditional publisher, the risk didn’t add up.<\/p>

But Will wasn’t ready to let it go. He’d done the research, built the layouts, and spent years thinking about this book. If a traditional publisher wouldn’t take the shot, he’d take it himself.<\/p>

200 pages, zero budget, and a lot of late nights<\/h2>

With a traditional publisher out of the picture, Will turned to self-publishing through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).<\/p>

Amazon prints each copy on demand when someone orders it, so there’s no need to commit to thousands of copies upfront. For a book with a narrow window before the tournament, that removed the biggest risk.<\/p>

But figuring out how to publish was the easy part. Actually creating a 200-page full-color cookbook as a one-person operation? That was a different challenge entirely.<\/p>

\n
\"World