The 2026 World Cup draw will go down in history as one of the most out of touch, embarrassing, disgraceful events that has ever been produced. And that was all before NHL legend Wayne Gretzky attempted to pronounce the names of countries that were being drawn from Pot 4.

An event like the World Cup draw should be easy enough to pull off reasonably. After all, you are just pulling out names of countries from a hat to place them in a 48-team field. But since FIFA is one of the most notoriously corrupt, self-indulgent, delusional organizations on the planet, it simply could not be that easy.

The event ran almost three hours, featuring a number of bizarre musical performances, celebrity appearances and the comedic stylings of FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who so badly wants to be humanity’s global representative to the universe that it is painful to witness him in any public setting.

And most mortifying of all was the dedication of the evening to Donald Trump, who received a made-up “peace prize” from world soccer’s governing body because his feelings were hurt that he didn’t win the real thing from the Nobel folks. FIFA and Infantino hailed Trump’s efforts as a peacemaker around the globe, apparently skipping over his administration’s potential war crimes in the Caribbean and terrorizing of immigrants at home.

But all of that, it seems, was just the warm-up acts for the true main event of the evening – Geography 101 with Wayne Gretzky.

Gretzky was the fourth North American athlete legend on stage to pull the names out of the pots for the World Cup draw, joining Aaron Judge, Tom Brady, and Shaquille O’Neal. The Great One was given Pot 4, the lowest ranked and final teams to qualify. This includes playoff rounds that have yet to be decided.

But instead of apparently doing any work to study beforehand, Gretzky seemed to just wing it on the stage, offering pronunciations of countries like Jordan and Curaçao that have likely never been spoken before.

You gotta hear Gretzky try to pronounce Curaçao. pic.twitter.com/hwxyo1rapU

— Andrew Perloff (@andrewperloff) December 5, 2025

Wayne Gretzky pronouncing Jordan at the FIFA World Cup Draw#Tweet #Twitter #Meme #Memes #React #Reaction #GIF #Pic #Picture #Vid #Video #Find #X #FIFA #WorldCup pic.twitter.com/9NUJDAOqr5

— @JRoc23’s GIFs/OSINT/Reactions/Vids 🟡  (@JRoc23G) December 5, 2025

The delighted look of satisfaction Wayne Gretzky makes after completely butchering the pronunciation of Macedonia here has an all time meme potential. Someone obviously just told him ‘you did great, Great One 👍’ pic.twitter.com/N8SUkw7xQK

— Mark Gottlieb (@MarkGottlieb) December 5, 2025

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