On Friday in Bahia, Brazil the draws for next year’s World Cup will take place. The event will be staged by FIFA at Costa do Sauipe.
The seeded nations: Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, England, Brazil, Spain, Uruguay, Germany and Uruguay will be assigned separate pools.
For the complete analysis, let’s take a look at what World Football Governing Body, FIFA has on their website
How are the pots distributed?
Pot 1 (seeds)
Pot 2 (CAF and CONMEBOL teams)
Algeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Chile and Ecuador
Pot 3 (AFC and CONCACAF teams)
Australia, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico and USA
Pot 4 (UEFA teams)
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, England, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia.
How will the draw be carried out?
The teams in Pot 1 will be automatically assigned position 1 in the groups in which they are drawn. Brazil will go automatically into position 1 in Group A.
The first step of the draw will be to pick out a team from Pot 4 – the only one with nine teams – and put that side into Pot 2, in order to ensure each zone has eight balls. Then it will be back to Pot 1 and Brazil will be placed into Group A, with the rest of the seeds drawn in position 1 of the remaining groups, consecutively up to the letter H.
Pot 2, now with teams from three different confederations, increases the risk of breaking the rule of geographical separation. In order to avoid a group with three European teams, there will be a Pot X featuring the four seeded South American teams. One ball will be drawn from this pot and this will determine the group for the sole European team in Pot 2. Then, Pot 2 will be drawn. The European team will go into the group already established, with the remaining sides fitting sequentially into Groups A to H.
It is also worth noting that some groups may be skipped to respect the rule of geographical separation, in order to avoid Chile and Ecuador going into sectors featuring South American seeds.
Pots 3 and 4 will then be drawn.
The position of the teams in the groups will also be drawn (except the seeds, as already mentioned).
