FA keeping fingers crossed over seedings

World Cup organisers are expected to say today that England will be one of the eight top seeds for next summer’s finals in Germany.

An announcement is due at noon in Leipzig, Germany, and it is understood the World Cup organising committee are leaning towards retaining the same system used for the 2002 and 1998 tournaments.

That would mean England being seeded alongside the hosts Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Spain and France – and would therefore avoid playing any of those heavyweights in the group stage of the competition.

The system uses a combination of past performances in the last three World Cup Finals and world rankings over the past three years.

Although the organisers are allowed to use any system they see fit, the system does mean all the major footballing nations of the world are included.

The English Football Association is taking nothing for granted. One senior FA figure said: “We hope from England’s point of view they use the same system as they have for recent tournaments because that would mean we were seeded.

“We would also be seeded if they looked at the qualifying campaigns but there is an outside chance that they could just use current world rankings, in which case, as England are ninth, we would miss out.”