Luis Suarez’s 30th birthday party sounded cripplingly dull

If, for some bizarre reason Luis Suarez offers to plan your shindig, politely decline.

You may think that as some of the most lavishly paid sports stars on the planet, the Barcelona team would spend their down time enjoying the finer things in life. Obviously, their chosen profession would mean that their champagne and caviar intake would be kept to a minimum, but one might assume that they would splash their astronomical amounts of cash in the pursuit of fun. However, they don't appear to engage in the sickening displays of wealth one might expect from the ludicrously rich. They don't go on Faberge egg hunts at Easter, they don't play 'Rolex conkers' in Autumn, nor do they go around paying us white and blue collar schmucks to do away with our dignity for a few shillings. (Don't act like you wouldn't pour 17 prawn cocktails down your trousers if Neymar got out his cheque-book. Everyone has their price.) https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/829256840533962753 Well at least there's no evidence of them doing any of that stuff. However, there are reports of them having a painfully banal version of what us mere mortals would struggle to deem as fun. Ivan Rakitic shed some light on how the La Liga giants pass the time to Croatian outlet Novi list, and it's surprising, to say the least.

"When we travel, we always play Ludo and joke with each other afterwards."

Ludo, arguably the greatest action-packed, thrill-ride ever to be housed inside a cardboard box, is pretty exciting in itself. Just to add another flavour to fun-flavoured broth, they even have set teams.

“Pepe Costa, Messi, Suarez and Javier Mascherano are in one team, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba and me are a second team."

If you thought that they would eventually reach a point of diminishing returns with the fun levels by playing so much Ludo, you'd be dead wrong. To celebrate Suarez's 30th birthday, they whipped out the green, yellow, red and blue game pieces for another round.

"I know people think a footballer’s life is all glamour, crazy parties, but recently Luis Suarez invited me to his 30th birthday, and it was the same as if any of you invited me: we bought him presents, sat down, had a dinner, conversation, had some fun and that is it."

We can only assume that the conversation portion of the night was exclusively about Ludo and Ludo-related topics, such as how good everyone is at playing Ludo.