England lost to Portugal in the 2006 World Cup quarter-final in Germany. The players were hurt by their elimination and things could have gone much worse for those England players.
Former England defender Rio Ferdinand who was a part of that 2006 World Cup team has opened up about the night when the England players thought they wouldn’t make it home and are going to die in a plane due to terrible turbulence and bad weather while returning from Germany.
Ferdinand told The Sun, via Marca: “We’d just been knocked out of the competition by Portugal in the quarter finals and we had the worst flight back you can imagine.”
“We got caught up in some terrible weather and everybody thought we were going to crash. We were all crying.”
“I was sat near Wayne Rooney and Steven Gerrard and their wives and everyone was screaming. It was turbulence on another level. It was mental and people and luggage were all over the place and no one knew what was going on.”
“I definitely thought, ‘This is it,’ especially when I looked at the air stewardesses. You can always gauge how serious things are by their expressions and I looked at them and they were all sat down in their seats stony faced and clearly thinking, ‘F***, we’re in trouble’.
“I’m usually quite calm but then I looked at them and I was properly scared.”
Fortunately, the plane landed safely in London with all the English players safe but Ferdinand and all the other players still remembers that day.
