World Cup 2018 Draw: Your Questions Answered
The World Cup does not begin until June, but a crucial moment for all 32 teams in the field arrives Friday, when the draw to populate the tournament’s eight first-round groups is made. If things fall right, a team could emerge from Friday’s draw with an easy route to the Round of 16. If they don’t, a team’s hopes could be dashed even before they arrive in Russia. Here is a look at how it all works.
When and where is the draw? Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern in the Kremlin in Moscow.
How can I watch? The draw will be streamed at fifa.com/world cup. Television coverage in the United States will be on Fox Sports 1 in English and on Telemundo in Spanish. (Both will come on the air early, at 9:30 a.m.) The New York Times also will provide minute-by-minute coverage on nytimes.com. In the U.K., BBC2 will show the draw, as will other major networks around the world.
Who is hosting? The English soccer star-turned-broadcaster Gary Lineker and a Russian sports journalist, Maria Komandnaya, whom American viewers might remember from her sideline reporting for Fox during the Confederations Cup last summer. Oddly, Lineker was chosen despite being a strong critic of FIFA.
But who will actually draw the teams? One retired soccer star from each country that has won the World Cup: Diego Maradona of Argentina, Gordon Banks of England, Miroslav Klose of Germany, Laurent Blanc of France, Cafu of Brazil, Carles Puyol of Spain, Diego Forlán of Uruguay and Fabio Cannavaro of Italy, plus Nikita Simonyan, a former Soviet great.
How does it work? Each team has been assigned to one of four pots, based on their world ranking. One team from each pot will be placed in each of the eight World Cup opening round groups, though there may be adjustments at times to keep teams from the same confederation apart in the group stage.
Who’s in pot 1? Russia, as the host nation, plus the top seven ranked teams in the tournament: Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Poland and France.
Wait — Belgium? Yes, Belgium. With players like Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku, it has become a solid team in recent years, making the quarterfinals of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 European Championships and qualifying for 2018 with ease.
But Poland? That one’s tougher to explain. Poland was not even close to qualifying in 2014, but an 8-1-1 qualifying campaign — plus a refusal to play friendlies that appears to have helped them game the FIFA rankings system — pushed the Poles into the top pot.
What about the other three pots? Pot 2 consists of Spain, Peru, Switzerland, England, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Croatia. Pot 3 is Denmark, Iceland, Costa Rica, Sweden, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal and Iran. Pot 4, nominally the weakest teams, is Serbia, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Panama, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Are there any restrictions? There can be no more than two European teams or one from any other continent in a single group, and FIFA said the draw will be monitored to ensure that, say, Peru, Colombia and Uruguay, who are in pot 2, will not be drawn into the same group with Brazil or Argentina.
Is this the same system as in the past? No. Typically, after the top pot, teams were assigned to pots geographically, not by rankings. Americans often complained that this put their team on equal footing with weaker North American teams like Honduras or Trinidad and Tobago.
So is the system fair? Many fans and commentators are dubious about the world rankings. One complaint is that friendly matches count, and teams that play fewer friendlies — like Poland — seem to get an advantage from that. Another is that the system includes results from as long as four years ago. Certainly any ranking that puts Poland over Spain is going to raise eyebrows.
Any teams to watch? The favorites, for sure, will have an eye on Spain and Croatia, hoping to avoid both of them out of Pot 2. Iran, in Pot 3, is another intriguing team. It breezed through qualifying without a loss three years after drawing praise for giving Argentina, a 2014 finalist, all it could handle in an opening round game.
What was the most entertaining draw? Many World Cup draws have been turgid affairs, overloaded with dignitaries and dragging on far too long. We’ll vote for the draw for USA 1994, held in Las Vegas, when Robin Williams’s clowning (he donned rubber gloves to choose the Ping-Pong balls) effectively took the starch out of Sepp Blatter.
