Ferdinand reveals terrifying flight back from 2006 World Cup

In the 2006 World Cup in Germany, England crashed out of the quarter-finals against Portugal following a dramatic penalty shootout. The players imagined a tough journey home, but not in the way it eventually turned out.

Rio Ferdinand recalled to the newspaper 'The Sun' the terrifying flight that players, family and staff members experienced. They all started to fear the worst: "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", the ex-United defender continued.

Ferdinand admitted that, while he usually has nerves of steel in these types of situations, his fears overcome him on this particular occasion: "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."