European WCQ question.

[Steve Dave]

Is there any plan in place or rule that dictates how the teams get placed into the 8 groups? Is it possible for England, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and Ukraine to be in the same group?

All I can find is how the WC teams are decieded after the groups of 8 are picked.

[glennaldo_sf]

No it's impossible for this to happen as the teams are seeded according to, I believe, their performances in the last three qualifying competitions. I believe the countries are placed into about 6 pools of teams with a similar rank and the groups are drawn by keeping teams from the same pool seperate.

[Steve Dave]

So those teams I mentioned would be in the same pool of teams and then when there were picking for the different groups each group would pick from this pool and then move to the next pool of teams who are equal in talent?

Maybe not exact but is that the gist?

[BoysInGreen]

That's basically it.

[glennaldo_sf]

Yes exactly - so the teams you mentioned (with perhaps the exception of Ukraine), would all be in the first seed pool and therefore kept apart when the draw is made. These websites I think have the details for the format of the 2006 qualifying draw.

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/releases/uefa_preliminary_format_en.pdf

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/t/preliminaries.html

[Steve Dave]

Thanks to everyone.

[Forza AZ]

For the seeding they count the points obtained in the last 2 qualifying campaigns, so for the current WC qualifying they used the results from Euro 2004 and WC 2002 qualifying.
They calculate the total amount of points and devide that through the number of matches.

This were the seeding pots:

Pot A
Czech Rep.
Turkey
Portugal
France
Italy
England
Spain
Sweden

Pot B
Netherlands
Denmark
Russia
Ireland
Slovenia
Poland
Belgium
Croatia

Pot C
Romania
Greece
Slovakia
Switzerland
Scotland
Austria
Serbia
Bulgaria

Pot D
Finland
Ukraine
Latvia
Israel
Norway
Wales
Bosnia
Iceland

Pot E
Macedonia
Georgia
Estonia
Cyprus
Belarus
Northern Ireland
Lithuania
Hungary

Pot F
Armenia
Albania
Liechtenstein
Faroer
Moldova
Azerbaidzjan
San Marino
Malta

Pot G
Andorra
Kazakhstan
Luxembourg

[eejit]

Yes good info, thks. Ukraine is doing really great topping their group from potD which is making it interesting.