France await seedings for World Cup draw

France have an agonising wait to see if they will also be among the top teams ahead of Friday’s draw for next summer’s World Cup.

FIFA’s World Cup organising committee will decide on the seeds and the format of the draw at a meeting in Cape Town tomorrow.

Using FIFA’s formula for the 2006 World Cup, current world rankings and performances in the previous two finals would see Germany, Brazil, Italy, Spain, England, France and Argentina seeded in that order along with hosts South Africa.

If however FIFA’s world rankings alone are used then France would miss out on being seeded with Holland taking their place.

Rankings alone have not been used in the past but FIFA relaunched the system with much fanfare a couple of years ago, boasting the new-look rankings were much more indicative of a country’s current position in world football.

FIFA also announced last week that if rankings were to be used in any way to determine seeding then the October standings would be used.

Each of the top seeds will be grouped with another European nation, and have a big chance of drawing one of five African countries other than the hosts.

Possible pots for Friday’s draw: eight groups of four countries would be drawn, each group containing one country from each pot.

Pot 1 (seeds)

South Africa, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Spain, England, France, Argentina.

Pot 2 (Europe)

Holland, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia.

Pot 3 (Africa and South America)

Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay.

Pot 4 (Asia, Oceania and North/Central America)

Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Mexico, Honduras.