April Fool balls up: story of superstar Arsenal player winning kosher voucher goes viral

Recollections that a Brazilian football star won a £100 kosher store voucher vary.

Arsenal midfielder Gabriel Martinelli was approached by enterprising young students from the Edgware-based Shalom Noam primary school, who live nearby his Hertfordshire home.

He agreed to buy a raffle ticket to support them and subsequently won second prize.

According, however, to a Whatsapp message that has gone viral among Arsenal supporters and made national and international news, it was a voucher to spend at the Shefa Mehadrin shops.

What he actually won was a £100 Amazon voucher.

Arsenal fan Jez Livingston from north London originally heard the story during a weekend visit to his parents.

Speaking to Jewish News, Livingston says: “On Sunday afternoon my mum told me a story about kids collecting for that school. She mentioned that the prize was a kosher butcher voucher. When I sent the message, I put in Shefa Hedrin because I knew they were the most religious.”

Livingston is keen to stress that he simply rehashed a story that his mother told him and sent it to three Whatsapp groups because he knew it would make them laugh.

“My mum had told me it was a kosher butcher. When I was writing it to my friends, I said Shefa because it was the ‘frummest’ sounding one.”

What he hadn’t anticipated was that Arsenal fans would take it as gospel.

“The story,” he continues, “had already been fabricated by the time it got to my mum.”

He jokes that he would “like some vouchers from Shefa for giving them national exposure, especially erev Pesach.”

He describes the story going viral as “complete nonsense. It’s just completely bonkers. I sent a Whatsapp message to my friends’ group and somewhere it’s ended up in the Daily Mail. I could see how quickly it was circulating because I started receiving my own Whatsapp message back to me. I wasn’t circulating anything of journalistic value. This is just a funny anectode that I’d heard. Martinelli did buy a raffle ticket. But it’s got lost in translation.”

Shalom Noam headteacher Chaya Posen told Jewish News: “This has been a lot of fun for the school and everybody is talking about it. Well done to the PTA for running the raffle. I am sure the children who met Mr Martinelli will be telling the story for a long time to come. We wish Mr Martinelli a chag kasher v’semeach for Pesach. If he ever wants to test his footballing skills I am sure we have a few children at Shalom Noam who would be happy to put him through his paces.”