World Cup 2018 - the qualification group draw

These pots could lead to some very interesting groups...

 

Wales in pot 1 and Italy and France in 2?

 

Those pots look like they've just been randomly chucked together.

 

I would be well pleased if we got the following for our group..

P1 England
P2 Iceland
P3 Albania
P4 Faroe Islands
P5 Cyprus
P6 San Marino

 

Re: I would be well pleased if we got the following for our group..

I'd not be surprised if we do get sumert like that, we tend to drop lucky on qualifying groups.

 

Don't they base it on form? Wales are flying in their qualifying group. France aren't playing many games with them not being in the Euro qualifiers. Not taken much notice of Italy's form but I assume this has something to do with it. This also explains why Iceland are in pot 2 ahead of Greece, Serbia, Sweden and Ukraine.

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No idea mate, would make sense I suppose.

 

Draw procedure

• Six seeding pots will be formed as per the FIFA world rankings for July 2015 published early in the month (June rankings).

• All groups will contain one team from each of the top five seeding pots. Each of the seven sides in the sixth pot will be allocated to a six-team group.

• Due to the centralisation of media rights for European Qualifiers, England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands will all be drawn into six-team groups. They may be placed in the same group if they are in different seeding pots.

• Due to the political situation between the countries, and based on the relevant decisions taken by the UEFA Executive Committee, Azerbaijan and Armenia cannot be drawn together.

• The fixture list will be confirmed on Sunday 26 July.

 

So how the fook are Wales in top pot? None of those rules put them in there.

 

For comparison - if this was a European Championship draw (which uses UEFA's ranking system [not FIFA's]), the groups would be:

Pot 1: Germany, France, Spain, Netherlands, England, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, Croatia

Pot 2: Switzerland, Bosnia, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania

Pot 3: Hungary, Greece, Poland, Iceland, Ireland, Turkey, Norway, Slovenia, Israel

Pot 4: Wales, Scotland, Serbia, Montenegro, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, Armenia, Albania, Estonia

Pot 5: Finland, Lithuania, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Belarus, Cyprus, Georgia, Macedonia

Pot 6: Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands, Luxembourg, Kazakhstan, Malta, Andorra, San Marino, (Gibraltar)


The question is - how can the two systems produce such different pots (19 [that’s 37% of] teams are in different pots under the UEFA calculation compared to the FIFA one)?

 

The uefa one seems a lot more realistic. It is fifa though so nothing surprises me.

 

Read a piece on Sky Sports the other day stating Wales were in pot 1 and Spain were pot 2 so not sure if those groups^^ are correct but either way its pretty ridiculous. Be happy with Italy, sweden in our group though, some good away trips.


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Correct. Wales have shot up the rankings due to an unbeaten run in competitive games - which are ranked higher than friendlies for obvious reasons. Also, there's a coefficient to be factored in when you beat teams higher than you in the rankings. Wales were in the fourth pot going into these qualifiers below Bosnia, Belgium & Israel - so the results against these have significantly improved their position for the WC qualifiers.

Apparently, if England had failed to win on the weekend, Wales would have gone above them in the rankings!