Ghana defender Jonathan Mensah has disclosed that Daniel Opare used his Real Madrid friendship with Cristiano Ronaldo to help him exchange jersey with the Portugal star at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
The four-time African champions were beaten 2-1 with the iconic number 7 scoring the winner. The result did not mean much though as both countries exited the competition.
But for the Columbus Crew guardsman, he made up for the disappointment of exiting the group stages with a “memorable” jersey swap with the newly signed Juventus forward.
However, he needed help from teammate Daniel Opare, who played with Ronaldo during his days at the Real Madrid Castilla team.
“I was like ‘Can we change?’ and he was like ‘Yeah, sà sÃ! SÃ, hermano!’, Mensah recalled as quoted by columbuscrew.com. “I knew this guy, Daniel Opare, he was on our team and he played for Real Madrid youth and he knew him you know because Cristiano was on the senior team.
"So, he was on the World Cup team with Ghana and after the game he said [to Ronaldo] ‘Oh, my friend wants to change jerseys’ and Ronaldo was like ‘Yeah sure, sure.’ Then we just changed jerseys and it was like something casual.”