Search icon

Football

25th Aug 2016

Champions League draw presenter had a bit of a nightmare introducing Ruud van Nistelrooy

Manchester United fans won't approve of this one...

Matt Tate

All eyes were on Thursday night’s much-anticipated Champions League group stage draw, as football fans found out who Leicester, Manchester City, Arsenal and Tottenham would be facing in Europe’s elite competition.

Leicester and Spurs were handed favourable draws, Arsenal will expect to progress from Group A and Pep Guardiola will face old club Barcelona with Manchester City, as well as Celtic.

As usual UEFA drafted in a number of big-name ex-professionals to help with the opening of the balls (always a much trickier process than you might imagine) and one of those was the fourth highest scorer in the competition’s history, Ruud van Nistelrooy.

The Manchester United legend was Champions League top scorer on three separate occasions, so you expected his introduction to be full of grandeur.

But presenter Anne-Laure Bonnet made the slip-up of all slip-ups as she invited the former striker to the stage. Now, we don’t want to be too hard on Bonnet. She speaks five languages, and English is not her native tongue, but this is very much one of those “you had one job” situations.

Van Nistelrooy was introduced as a “Champions League icon” with a list of former clubs that includes Real Madrid and Manchester…City.

Let’s be honest, it was a pretty tiny gaffe in the grand scheme of things, but that one was never going to slip past the wolves of social media.