Brazil in the World Cup 2010

FIFA announced today the top seeds for the final draw which will happen on December 4th. The top seed countries are: South Africa (host), Brazil, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, Argentina and the Netherlands.

There was no surprise; as commented at this post, FIFA had pre-announced that the seeds would probably follow the ranking of October 2009, as it indeed happened. The reason why France is not a seed is because they ranked 9th in October, and not because of the controversial match against Ireland.

FIFA also announced the rules of the final draw.

The 32 countries will be divided in 4 pots of eight countries each.

South Africa will seed Group A. The other seeds will be put in Pot 1 and draw across the other groups (Brazil expressed preference for groups B or G).

Then, a country of each pot will be drawn to compose each group. This avoids two countries from a same pot to be placed in a same group. Also, if two countries of the same continent (excepted Europe) are drawn to the same group, the draw is repeated.

Composition of pots:

Pot 1: seed countries

Pot 2: Australia, Japan, Korea DPR (North Korea), Korea Republic (South Korea), Honduras, Mexico, USA and New Zealand.

Pot 3: Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

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

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under FIFA, countries.