World Cup Draw Preview
It's the World Cup draw tomorrow. In my excitement, I wrote quite a long preview of it. Then I thought about who would actually read such a thing. Instead, then, here are a few nuggets of insight into what might happen. If that piques your interest, you can tackle the long read.
First, if you've absolutely no idea how the draw works, then please watch this.
Groups Of Death
Australians are already convinced that they'll be in The Group Of Death. Well, here are a couple of examples of what that would look like:
Germany, Spain, Senegal, Australia;
Brazil, Spain, Denmark, Australia;
or, at a stretch:
Germany, Uruguay, Denmark, Australia;
but really, unless you get Spain from Pot 2, then it's not so much a Group Of Death as the natural consequence of being in Pot 4 and being drawn alongside superior teams.
England can't be drawn alongside Spain, but they can still have it pretty tough. For example:
Germany, England, Senegal, Japan;
Germany, England, Costa Rica, Nigeria;
Brazil, England, Denmark, Nigeria;
Brazil, England, Senegal, Serbia;
but whomever they get from Pots 3 & 4, England should set their sights on qualification for the last 16. It might be very difficult indeed and it definitely might not happen, but the other two teams would rather avoid England more than England would rather avoid them.
Of course, a real Group Of Death wouldn't contain England or Australia. Imagine these:
Germany, Spain, Senegal, Japan;
Germany, Spain, Costa Rica, Nigeria;
Brazil, Spain, Denmark, Nigeria;
Brazil, Spain, Senegal, Serbia;
Germany, Uruguay, Denmark, Nigeria;
Germany, Uruguay, Senegal, Serbia;
which could all happen. Tasty.
'Fingers Crossed' Scenarios
Australia will have to produce an upset to qualify, regardless of the draw, but these potential groups:
Poland*, Peru, Iceland, Australia;
Poland, Croatia, Egypt, Australia;
would improve their chances, surely? Actually, this might be what the FFA don't want, as failure in a group like this would be more ignominious than heroic.
England have a tendency to underperform against weaker opposition - in 2010 they scraped through a group containing USA, Algeria and Slovenia - so one of these draws:
Poland, England, Egypt, Saudi Arabia;
Poland, England, Iran, Panama;
would be a double-edged sword. The pressure would be on us to win the group, rather than just qualify, and failure to do so would almost inevitably lead to an instant knockout exit.
Of course, England and Australia are bound to end up looking enviously at a group like this:
Poland, Peru, Iceland, Panama;
Poland, Mexico**, Egypt, Saudi Arabia;
Poland, Croatia, Iran, Panama;
and thinking: "We could totally qualify if we'd got that draw." Well, tough luck.
*This looks harsh on Poland. They're a better team than Russia, and substitute them if you prefer, but the hosts nearly always get through.
**Mexico, also, nearly always get through.
Adjacent Groups
All the headlines after the draw will be about who is in your country's group. Those are the three fixtures which will definitely happen, and which we can start anticipating. For countries with significant hopes of progressing further though - all the usual favourites, but also the likes of England - the most important outcome is the position of your group, and particularly its neighbour.
The knockout draw is preordained based on group positions. You can project the latter stages all the way to the final once the draw is made, but you'll get it wrong because there'll be surprises somewhere. Adjacent groups though - A & B, C & D etc. - will pair their qualifiers in the last 16, 1st v 2nd. This posits three possible scenarios:
1) Double-strong adjacent group e.g. Germany & Spain
If this happens to England, it's obviously bad news. However, at least it means that there's no great pressure to win the group. Just qualify, 1st or 2nd, and look forward to a tough match either way. Also, this scenario is unlikely, as it pretty much hinges on Spain.
2) Double-weak adjacent group e.g. Poland & Peru
This is what England want from the draw, even more than our own group being easy. This way, even by qualifying in 2nd place, we'd still fancy our chances of reaching the quarter-finals. Again, Russia would also suffice as an adjacent top seed.
3) Strong-weak adjacent group e.g. Germany & Peru (or even Poland & Spain...)
In this case, it becomes extra important to win the group, as the reward is huge compared to qualifying in second place. This is the most likely scenario, involving any top seed except Poland or Russia, any team from Pot 2 except Spain (although Belgium & Uruguay are pretty even).
Possible Familiar Combinations
These pairs of teams, if drawn together, would meet in the group stage for the fifth time:
Argentina & Nigeria - 1994, 2002, 2010, 2014 (four times in the last six tournaments)
France & Mexico - 1930, 1954, 1966, 2010
Brazil & Mexico - 1950, 1954, 1962, 2014
Brazil & Yugoslavia - 1930, 1950, 1954, 1974
So, yeah, Yugoslavia... Technically FIFA allocates their history to Serbia. However, Croatia was part of it too, right? and they were in Brazil's group in 2006 & 2014 too, so that's kind of a record six pairings.
If Brazil get Serbia & Mexico though (they can't get Croatia & Mexico) then those three will be in a group together for the third time, after 1950 & 1954. This kind of thing interests me.
Argentina, England, Sweden, Nigeria - 2002
This is the only entire group that could be drawn that has occurred previously. Wouldn't that be exciting? Be sure to mention it at a dinner party this weekend, whether it happens or not.
In terms of total World Cup meetings, the following possible pairs are in front:
Germany & Serbia (7) - quarter-final 1954, 1958, 1962, 1974; group stage 1990, 1998, 2010
Brazil & Sweden (6) - final 1958, semi-final 1950*, 1994; group stage 1978, 1990, 1994
However, if England & Germany are drawn together, then not only would it be the sixth time they've met at the World Cup, but they'd become the first pair to meet in the final (1966), semi-final (1990), quarter-final (1970), last 16 (2010) and the group stage. They even met in the one-off, 12-team second group stage of 1982 for good measure.
World Cup debutants Iceland and Panama obviously have no familiar opposition on the big stage. They can get a headstart on their research though, due to the geographical restrictions on the draw and resultant permutations:
Iceland, along with their two Scandinavian neighbours, have a roughly 1/3 chance of drawing either Nigeria or Morocco, and will almost definitely not draw Serbia;
Panama have a 50% chance of drawing Iran! This is due to the unusual positioning of the other Asian and North American teams in the seeding pots, and is the single most likely outcome of the draw.
Okay, that's enough, for the 'short' version at least. There's a more detailed preview below, but if you've read enough, and some of it didn't entirely make sense, then do please just watch this.
The Long Read
One of the things I love about sport is the way that it arranges people, teams and nations into lists and groups. Actually, sometimes I wonder whether that's the only thing I love about sport. Now, while actual sporting competitions achieve this grouping and ranking in a thrilling and above all accurate manner, nothing does it quite so neatly and efficiently as a tournament draw. I'm all for watching people actually playing sport, but for nail biting entertainment you just can't beat a good tournament draw, and, as draws go, the World Cup draw is hard to beat.
At 6pm tomorrow in Moscow (3pm in England, 2am Saturday in Melbourne, but trust me, worth staying up for) the draw will take place for next year's men's football world cup. The tournament gets to be called simply the World Cup, title case and all, because while most sports have worthy equivalents, this one is the original and the best, having crowned the best team on the planet every four years since 1930, except when world war rudely intervened.
The tournament has grown, and its format evolved, since the 1930s, when nations balked at intercontinental travel, leaving lopsided draws of mostly knockout games. From 1954 to 1970, 16 teams in groups of four competed for quarter-final spots with pleasing symmetry, but Europe and South America dominated participation too much for a 'world' tournament. 1974 and 1978 tinkered with the format before the expanded, experimental nadir of 1982.
In 1986 FIFA settled, for three iterations, on a cumbersome 24-team, six-group option. Finally in 1998 symmetry returned with added inclusivity: 32 qualified teams of reasonable continental equity are draw into eight groups of four, yielding 16 survivors for knockout play, and noone complains very much; naturally, FIFA has resolved, from 2026, to sabotage such a satisfactory status quo through further expansion and meddling, meaning Friday's draw will be the penultimate of its kind.
As has long been the case, each of the groups will have a top seeded team. Russia, as hosts, have the privilege of seeding, alongside the seven top ranked qualified teams, whose principle reward is to avoid each other in the group stage. Here are the top seeds:
Plenty of familiar names here. South America's two superpowers are present, of which the iconic Brazil are currently strongest. Of the six Europeans, only reigning champions Germany and star-studded France are historic football royalty. The more recent pretenders are European champions Portugal, and Belgium, who mirror neighbours France in boasting a squad of household names without, as yet, the silverware to match.
At every draw there's a seeded team who can only be congratulated on achieving the requisite ranking through consistent results and judicious scheduling of friendlies, but who seem out of their depth in such illustrious company, and this time it's Poland. Then there's Russia, whose low ranking is somewhat unfair given their lack of qualifying fixtures, but who will nonetheless be hoping that home advantage counts for a great deal if they are to progress far.
The draw aims to create groups with a mixture of teams, both in terms of quality and geography. This fulfills the tournament's dual aims: allow the best teams to progress the furthest in order to properly identify a world champion; and provide teams from different continents a rare opportunity to play each other in a competitive environment. In previous years this was achieved by dividing the remaining teams into pots, from which to allocate them to groups, on a geographical basis.
As well as ensuring geographical diversity in the groups, this tended to act as a de facto seeding system, due to the varying standards between continents. Typically, the remaining European teams would form one pot, with another pot for South American and African nations, and a final, weaker pot combining Asia and North America. This year though, the practice has been replaced with pure seeding, based on world rankings. For example, this is Pot 2:
Three different continents are represented and teams are only there on merit - in so far as FIFA's rankings can be said to reflect merit accurately... Spain are the standout name here, having dominated the world game for nearly a decade before a disappointing last World Cup. They narrowly miss Pot 1 and would assume favouritism alongside at least two of the top seeds. England, Switzerland and Croatia are the next strongest European teams.
All three of the remaining South American teams are in Pot 2, including Uruguay, double champions in the Pathé newsreel era. This is where it gets complicated though: under the new seeding system, geographical diversity must be artificially applied by negotiating the draw so as to keep teams from the same continent apart; therefore, the three South Americans cannot be drawn alongside their top seeded neighbours - they have to join a group with a European top seed.
In other words, Brazil and Argentina only have five possible options each from Pot 2 - the four Europeans, and Mexico, who will have to avoid fellow North Americans later in the draw. Since there are 14 European nations in the draw though, the rule is relaxed for them, with up to the two of them allowed in each group. Let's see how this affects the allocation of teams from Pot 3:
Sweden have a long World Cup history, but even relative arrivistes Denmark are tournament veterans compared to debutants Iceland. The three Scandinavian nations will have limited options when Pot 3 is drawn, since two or three of the groups will already contain two European teams. Meanwhile Costa Rica, surprise package of the last tournament, cannot be drawn alongside Mexico.
Mirroring the highly ranked South Americans, Africa's five entrants are split between the bottom two pots. Of the first three to be drawn, Tunisia have the most World Cup experience, despite Egypt's numerous African championships, but Senegal, with their conveyor belt of exported talent, look best set to repeat the impressive quarter-final showing of their only previous appearance. Iran are the only Asian nation to escape Pot 4, which looks like this:
There are those four other Asian teams then. They've all been here numerous times before, and only Korea have ever reached so much as a quarter-final. Australia will doubtless bemoan their draw as a Group Of Death, but the harsh reality is that, like all the teams in this pot, they're going to be drawn with three stronger teams; that's not bad luck, rather just an outcome of being a less strong team.
Iran can't be drawn with any other Asian team then. The thing is though, if they're already drawn with two European teams, then they also can't have Serbia - lonely, lowly Serbia, by European standards at least. In fact (and I won't bore you with the maths here) the knock on effect of other permutations means that, statistically, there's a roughly 50% chance that Iran will be drawn with Panama, who themselves have to avoid the groups containing Mexico and Costa Rica.
Morocco and Nigeria can't be drawn alongside any of the three African nations from Pot 3 either, so all in all it's going to be fantastic to watch how the FIFA suits and assorted guest celebrities juggle the balls and shuffle the pots to ensure that the draw runs smoothly, particularly towards the end. I'll be up all night to watch the fun, and will probably feel the urge to write about it afterwards...
One last thing - the pot that didn't qualify:
