This is a very exciting week. The final draw for the 2014 Fifa World Cup will take place on Friday in Bahia at 18:00 South African time.
The qualified teams will be seeded and organised into pots. Seeding is based on the October 2013 Fifa World Rankings and not the November edition. This was done to ensure the teams involved in the November play-offs were not given an unfair advantage. On Friday teams will be organised into four pots of eight teams. The seven highest ranked teams will be seeded and placed in Pot 1 alongside the host nation Brazil, who are automatically placed in Group A. How the other pots will be determined and the format of the draw will only be determined on Tuesday.
However that does not mean we cannot have some fun here. No sports fan can wait for these kind of things so, just for fun, using our knowledge of how previous draws have been done i.e. there has to be at least two European teams in five of the groups, here is what the eight groups could look like come Friday night.
GROUP A: BRAZIL, NETHERLANDS, IVORY COAST, HONDURAS
GROUP B: SPAIN, ITALY, ECUADOR, ALGERIA
GROUP C: GERMANY, ENGLAND, GHANA, JAPAN
GROUP D: ARGENTINA, USA, CROATIA, IRAN
GROUP E: COLOMBIA, PORTUGAL, RUSSIA, NIGERIA
GROUP F: BELGIUM, CHILE, FRANCE, SOUTH KOREA
GROUP G: URUGUAY, GREECE, MEXICO, AUSTRALIA
GROPU H: SWITZERLAND, BOSNIA, COSTA RICA, CAMEROON
I have no right to go beyond this but hey, this is my blog so this is what I reckon the Second Round fixtures could look like based on the above.
BRAZIL vs ITALY
GERMANY vs USA
COLOMBIA vs CHILE/FRANCE
URUGUAY vs CAMEROON
SPAIN vs NETHERLANDS
ARGENTINA vs ENGLAND
BELGIUM vs PORTUGAL
SWITZERLAND vs MEXICO
Shall I continue? Yes, why not? Here are the quarter-finals.
BRAZIL vs GERMANY
COLOMBIA vs URUGUAY
SPAIN vs ARGENTINA
BELGIUM/PORTUGAL vs MEXICO
And now the semi-finals.
GERMANY vs COLOMBIA/URUGUAY
ARGENTINA vs BELGIUM/PORTUGAL
And that gives us the ubiquitous Fifa World Cup final, featuring a European team against a South American nation.
GERMANY ARGENTINA
Is it a co-incidence that my favourite European team meats my South American favourite? I’ll let you decide. Nevertheless, luck plays a big role in determining the Fifa World Cup draw considering that teams are drawn out of a pot. With that in mind, if I just do one responsible thing this week then please allow me to point out that the actual draw on Friday night could look entirely different to this one. Next week, I’ll discuss the real deal and make an early prediction.