The internets are currently overflowing with World Cup 2010 mock draws and pretend groups of death right now. But don’t get confused. The draw for the eight groups of World Cup 2010 groups has not happened yet, and will not happen until Friday, December 4th, 2009 in Cape Town, South Africa.
The four teams in each group will be drawn from four separate “pots” each containing eight teams, so as to keep the better teams away from each other in the group stage. So if, for example, Brazil and Spain are in Pot 1, they’ll definitely avoid each other in the group stage.
Despite all the mock draws, no one actually knows for sure which teams will be in which pots, and we won’t know until December 2nd. Here’s what FIFA has to say:
The detailed criteria to determine the seeded teams for the Final Draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ will be confirmed at the next meeting of the Organising Committee for the FIFA World Cup™ in Cape Town on 2 December 2009 (and announced at a press conference following the meeting).
Got that?
So, rather than doing mock draw based on shaky guesswork, I thought it would be more interesting to argue discuss which team should be in which pot ahead of the draw.
The only rule right now is that our World Cup hosts South Africa will definitely be seeded in Pot 1. Might seem unfair as they’re absolutely not amongst the best eight teams in the world, or even close, but that’s the reward they get for building all those stadia and inviting the rest of us to come over and visit for the month.
So… here are the 32 teams of World Cup 2010, in alphabetical order:
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Cameroon
Chile
Cote d'Ivoire
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Honduras
Italy
Japan
Mexico
Netherlands
North Korea
New Zealand
Nigeria
Paraguay
Portugal
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Switzerland
United States
Uruguay
And here’s what I’m asking/inviting you to do: Based on how you think the four pots either will be or should be divided, please do one of the following:
1. Split the 32 teams into four pots of eight (Pot 1 is the strongest, Pot 4 the weakest), or
2. Tell us the eight “seeded” teams you’d place in Pot 1.
To be clear, this is just a rumour right now. Nothing more, and certainly nothing official. Plus Guus Hiddink is officially contracted to the Russian national team until July 2010. So let’s not get carried away. But…
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