The drawing of lots for the 2010 World Cup will be determined on the 4th of December. FIFA have yet to announce the seeding procedure and thus a mixture of geographical draw precedent, current FIFA rankings and past World Cup performance points, and upcoming ranking changes, have been used to complete the below.
Goal.com underlines that
However, it’s not quite as elementary as it may seem at first. It is simply not the case that the team swill be thrown into four pots by order of descending ranking. For one thing, South Africa, the hosts, and reigning champions Italy are defaulted into the top seeding pot, although the Italians would be there anyway. These seeding pots are decided by a mixture of FIFA ranking and past finals performances of 2002 and 2006.
Secondly, due to FIFA rules, teams from the same confederation are, whenever possible, kept apart. This means that there will not be two South American or Asian teams in the same group. Due to the sheer volume of European teams – 15 – there will be some groups with more than one country from UEFA, but there is very likely to be a hard cap of two.
This was the case for the 2006 draw, whose procedures we largely mirror below as we look ahead to the draw. For the reason of continental hard caps as given above, Pot 2 is likely to comprise UEFA-only teams, with AFC, OFC and CONCACAF in Pot 3 and the non-seeded CONMEBOL teams joining Africa’s CAF in the fourth pot.
In other words, only Pot 1 is truly an ‘achievement’ to reach (South Africa’s host status aside), and the rest are largely geographic, with ranking taken as a secondary concern.
Although this World Cup means nothing to me (as Turkey is out of it), if Goal’s predictions are true, I want two things to happen in the seeding:
1- France to be in the same group with Algeria.
2-A combination of Spain&Brazil / Netherlands&Portugal / Mexico&USA/ Cameroon&Ivory Coast in the same group.
Goal’s prediction can be seen below:
| Pot 1 |
Pot 2 (UEFA Pot) |
 South Africa (CAF – as hosts) |
 Netherlands (UEFA) |
 Germany (UEFA) |
 Portugal (UEFA) |
 Brazil (CONMEBOL) |
 Switzerland (UEFA) |
 Italy (UEFA) |
 Greece (UEFA) |
 Spain (UEFA) |
 Serbia (UEFA) |
 England (UEFA) |
 Denmark (UEFA) |
 France (UEFA) |
 Slovakia (UEFA) |
 Argentina (CONMEBOL) |
 Slovenia (UEFA) |
| Pot 3 |
Pot 4 |
 Mexico (CONCACAF) |
 Paraguay (CONMEBOL) |
 USA (CONCACAF) |
 Ghana (CAF) |
 South Korea (AFC) |
 Cameroon (CAF) |
 Japan (AFC) |
 Cote d’Ivoire (CAF) |
 Australia (AFC) |
 Nigeria (CAF) |
 Honduras (CONCACAF) |
 Uruguay (CONMEBOL) |
 New Zealand (OFC) |
 Algeria (CAF) |
 North Korea (AFC) |
 Chile (CONMEBOL) |
