Wayne Gretzky roasted for bungled pronunciations at World Cup draw

Wayne Gretzky isn’t necessarily the Great One when it comes to pronouncing country names.

Yes, it was an extremely cringey and awkward World Cup draw ceremony with so many gaffes and weird moments before we learned the complete list of groups competing at the 2026 FIFA tournament. That included the all-time NHL great participating in the draw, and he got a tough assignment: that had all the placeholders for multiple countries competing in the playoffs.

He struggled with North Macedonia (“Mack-a-donia”) and Curacao (Cur-ack-oh), Jordan (emphasis on the DAN) and Türkiye (I think I heard Turkeya) and fans decided to roast him for it. Here’s a roundup of folks on X (formerly Twitter) having some fun there:

LOL!