Rio Ferdinand, a former defender of the Sir Alex ferguson’s Manchester United, has a seasonable post career in television broadcasting and a regular event host for many FIFA and UEFA events.
It was nothing surprising that he was a pivotal anchor in the recently happened World Cup 2026 group stage draw.
Ferdinand was much involved in hosting the actual draw while updating the grouping of teams.
Since it was a 48 team draw which could not be done in minutes, it had frequent break in between where the Hollywood actor Danny Ramirez was delivered the duty of engaging with the audience performing interviews with former soccer stars.
Danny Ramirez is a renowned star in the industry having played roles in Tom cruise starrer “Top Gun maverick” and is very well known as “Joaquin Torres” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when he first appeared in “The falcon and the Winter Soldier” series and has continued as the mentee of Falcon in “Captain America: Brave new World” and in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday”.
Although born in Chicago, the football connection to him is a no brainer being a descendant of Colombia and Mexico. He had also tried football as a career during his high school days.
During the break when Ramirez had the chance to interview Yaya Toure, former Manchester city legend, he started a friendly banter between Ferdinand and Yaya on their rivalry during their playing days and whether they all have sorted it out now.
Rio Ferdinand too joined along to make it fun saying, “but I haven’t really forgiven Yaya for that 2012 title race where they took it off us but it’s fine… I’m over it man, come on, let me live man.”
There was also another incident when he interviewed Iker Casillas, Ramirez asked Ferdinand whether he scored against him.
Ferdinand who had never scored against Casillas in his career and without unable to play out the situation ended up in an awkward situation to answer with the co host Samantha Johnson to the rescue.
Post the draw, Ferdinand shared a pic on Twitter where he is seen locking Ramirez between his hands and a caption “Punishment” as fun intended action against the cross questions Ramirez put Ferdinand in trouble.
In response to this Dani Ramirez made the befitting funny reply implying that Ghana are going to upset England, the home Country of Ferdinand, with a scoreline of 2-1 in Ghana’s favour.
Ferdinand acknowledged the tweet as light hearted as it was meant.
Ramirez reply is not just a random scoreline against England but in accordance with the history of how motivated and dangerous Ghana turn up for a world cup event.
Ghana have always been a serious threat despite their underdog outlook.
To support the statement, Ghana’s victory against Czech Republic in the 2006 World Cup is an example of how they punch above their weights. Czech republic were ranked 2nd in the world and Ghana were 48th during the event.
Also Ghana’s impressive run in the 2010 World cup till the quarter finals was a significant achievement for African football. They did it beating the United States in the RO16 who topped their group ahead of the golden age England.
England and Ghana are in the possible “group of death” Group L along with Croatia and Panama. The tag of “group of death” is certified to this group as fans could not count on a certain winner due to the history and unpredicatability of every team.
