for the 2006 world cup. Their ranking system was combination of previous world cup performances and fifa world ranking.

Now they just revert to simple world ranking which resulted in France losing their seed for the Netherlands.

Did they just change the seeding just to punish France for the handball controversy or what? It seems strange that they abandon a pretty decent seeding system that was used in the previous two world cups just like that.

If they had the world ranking by itself for the seeding for the last world cup. USA would have been a seeded team for the 2006 world cup which wouldn’t be to FIFA’s liking.

It seems like FIFA are changing the seeding system for it’s own political benefit

The easiest opponents and the ones our style of play would suit to beat:
South Africa, Paraguay and Serbia

The toughest opponents:
Brazil, Ivory Coast and Portugal.

We seem to get stuck with Brazil a lot in tournaments and FIFA officials will give them the protection they need to progress.

We won’t be playing Japan, USA or the All Whites in this WC – unless we proceed further into the tournament.

Main thing is to avoid France & Portugal from Pot 4. That way even thought we’ll probably be with a strong seed we’ll at least have 2 teams we could beat.

BTW – seems the unseeded South Americans get a pretty big free kick with a 1/3 chance of drawing Sth Africa. Thats almost as good as being seeded.

None of the 2nd tier European teams scare the bejeezus out of me – and we all know that the top nations are always favoured by the refs.

nigeria are probably the weakest of the african teams, apart from the hosts.

Id doubt anyone would be fearing france either, but they have pedigree no doubt.

I guess if france ended up in group A with sth africa it might even out the draw on paper

My tip for easiest group for Australia and hardest.

Easiest:
Sth Africa, Australia, Chile, Greece

Hardest:
Spain, Australia, Nigeria, France

The committee also approved the composition of the other pots as well as the procedure for the final draw:

• Pot 2 will be composed of teams from Asia (Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic), North, Central America and the Caribbean (Honduras, Mexico, USA) and Oceania (New Zealand)

• Pot 3 will include teams from Africa (Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria) and South America (Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay)

• Pot 4 will have the remaining European teams (Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland)

• hosts South Africa will be automatically positioned as A1; the other seeded teams will be drawn into the other groups B-H, but will always be in position “1” of their group

• groups will be drawn from A to H and the positions in the group will be drawn for Pots 2 to 4

• geographical criteria will also be respected, meaning that no two teams from the same confederation will be drawn in the same group (except European teams, where a maximum of two will be in a group). For example, South Africa cannot play the African teams from Pot 3 and Argentina and Brazil cannot be drawn against the three remaining South American teams.

The pots for Friday’s World Cup draw to be hosted in Cape Town.

Pot 1 (seeds): South Africa (group A), Argentina, Brazil, England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain

Pot 2: Australia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Honduras, Mexico, USA, New Zealand

Pot 3: Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

Pot 4: Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland

The Italy group wasn’t seen as a group of death at all. And why would it with USA and Ghana, two teams who Italy and Czech would have been confident in getting wins over (though in actual events, that was not the case).

I wasn’t suggesting that the citizens of South Africa don’t support their team, but rather highlighting that local fans have bought more tickets to see England than they have their own team.