Soundoff: How Would You Seed for the World Cup 2010 Draw?

Calm down unbelievable, that was the seeding of 2006.

I know you like to dismiss Mexico every chance you get, but relax and read a couple of lines first.

Posted from  United States

Kris, Your Mock draw scares me, if Brazil, France, and Algeria were in the same group. First of all, France is Brazil’s bogey. Second, France and Algeria in the same group would be like civil war in France.

Anyhow, I have a feeling it will be strictly by rankings. Which would make the first pot look like this:

Pot 1:
South Africa
Spain
Brazil
Netherlands
Italy
Portugal
Germany
France

I believe the other four pots will be divided by divisions such as AFC & CONCACAF in one pot, etc.

Posted from  United States

France not only handballs their way into the world cup, but they also get seeded?!

If France doesn’t win this one, it’ll would be such a shame!

Posted from  United States

Option 1 would be the same format they used in 2006 except this time they wouldn’t need a special pot because there will be 8 unseeded UEFA teams. Pot A would contain the seeded teams, Pot B the UEFA teams, Pot C the African and South American teams, but to avoid teams from the same confederation ending up in the same group South Africa would draw from South America and the two seeded South American teams would draw from the Africa before the South American and African teams would be placed into Pot C. Finally, Pot D would contain Asia, Oceania, and CONCACAF teams.

Pot A – South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Spain
Pot B – Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, Potugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland
Pot C – Algeria, Camerron, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, Uruaguay
Pot D – Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, New Zealand, Honduras, Mexico, USA

Option 2 would be similar to option 1 but Pot C and Pot D would change. FIFA might use this since this time around the remianing unseeded South American teams have a lower combined ranking than the CONCACAF teams so they would group CONCACAF and Africa together to create a stronger pot C and a weaker Pot D creating the likelihood of more balanced groups. This would make Pot D Asia, Oceania, and South America. In this scenario South Africa would draw from CONCACAF before Pot C teams are placed in pot together and Argentina and Brazil would draw from Asia/Oceania before Pot D teams are drawn together. Again this is to avoid teams in same confederation to be put into same group.

Pot A – South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Spain
Pot B – Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland
Pot C – Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Honduras, Mexico, USA
Pot D – Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

Option 3 is a little different. You would still have four pots but not all pots would have 8 teams. Pots A and B would stay the same, but Pot C and Pot D would be difference and more based on geography. Pot C would conteain teams from Asia/Oceania and Africa, while Pot D would contain teams from the Americas. However Pot C would be split at first with teams from Asia/Oceania and Africa because in this scenario every group picks one team from each pot with the exception of the groups containing Argentiana dn Brazil as they would draw two teams from Pot C. One from the Asia/Oceania side and one from the African side.

Pot A – South Africa, Italy, Argentian, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Spain
Pot B – Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland
Pot C – Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, New Zealand
Pot D – Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Honduras, Mexico, USA

Option 4 is similar to the draw procedure used in the UEFA CHampions League. Teams would be ranked 1-32. Placed into 4 pots. However, still te teams from the same confederation cannot be drawn together would still apply much like teams from the same country can’t be drawn into the same group. Pot A would contain 1-8, Pot B 9-16, Pot C 17-24, and Pot D 25-32. I ranked the teams based on the seeding formula and not the FIFA rankings.

Pot A – South Africa, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Spain, England, France, Argentina
Pot B – Portugal, Netherlands, Mexico, USA, Switzerland, Paraguay, Ghana, Cameroon
Pot C- Korea Republic, Japan, Australia, Ivory Coast, Greece, Nigeria, Serbia, Uruguay
Pot D – Denmark, Chile, Slovenia, Honduras, Slovakia, Algeria, New Zealand, Korea DPR

Thank you very much,it’s helpful to me

I know a little about it, now i learn it,thanks!

My bet is that neither Portugal or Netherlands will be seeded due to previous WC’s where they have failed to qualify.

If you use the seeding formula’s used for the previous two world cups, these are the teams that will make it – which ever formula you use.

Pot 1:
South Africa
Brazil
Germany
Italy
Spain
England
Argentina
France

Pot 2:
Remaining european teams

Pot 3:
Remaining African and South American Teams

Pot 4:
Asian, Oceania, and North/Central American Teams

I also think fifa may have a couple of “special” pots to avoid having two african or south american teams in the same group.

the way to avoid special pots is teams containing African and South American teams in those pots the seeded teams from those respective regions draw out of the other half of the pot before teams actually get put into Pot C or Pot D. So there is actually a CONMEBOL pot a CAF pot, a CONCACAF pot, an OFC/Asia pot before being put into Pot C or Pot D. Hope that made sense or helped any of you out as far as draw procedure. That’s how they avoid teams from South America and Africa meeting teams from their same region.

In 2006 there were 9 unseeded European teams and that’s why they needed a special pot. The way they avoided Mexico who was seeded being drawn against another CONCACAF team is they had Mexico’s group draw from the other portion of Pot D the portion that contained Asian teams and not CONCACAF teams. They did the same with South America. As Brazil and Argentina drew from Pot B before Ecuador and Paraguay were put into it.

Seeded teams:

South Africa
Brasil
Spain
Germany
Italy
France
England
Argentina

Pot 2:

Denmark
Greece
Portugal
Netherlands
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Switzerland

Pots 3 and 4 can have different options, depending on whether the remaining South African teams are put together with the remaining teams of South America (Uruguay, Chile, and Paraguay) or with the teams of Concacaf (Mexico, USA, and Honduras). North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand will be in the same group and will be put either with the remainig South American teams or with Concacaf teams. Yet, the South African teams can be put in pot 3 or 4. The same can happen with the group of North Korea, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand.

I don’t care about France’s ranking. A team that didn’t finish 1st in their group and hand-balled their way into the tournament had better not be seeded in the first group. If they are, FIFA will have adopted an absolute joke of a system.

Why not go strictly by ranking? Modified, of course, to elave out of Pot q

Posted from  United States

Honestly, no way is it fair that CONCACAF can’t face Asian teams and CONMEBOL can’t face African teams. It’s kind of silly.

My take on it (and I know this is late into the topic): why not just seed the top eight and make a free for all draw from then on, avoiding regional repeats. How? Bare with me (and balls balls balls… get the giggles out now).

Basically, make up a new bowl for every unseeded spot: 24 new bowls for every unseeded spot. This bowl will only have teams that aren’t already represented in the group, i.e. in a group with a CONMEBOL seed, a UEFA team, and a CONCACAF team, the final spot will be drawn from all non-represented confederations: Africa, Asia and Oceania.

To explore in more detail:

Have 24 bowls, one for each unseeded team. These bowls will have a ton of balls containing only that team’s balls, i.e. the Ghana bowl will only have Ghana balls.

First draw all the seeds into their respective groups, with South Africa in Group A, Italy Group F (or whatever it is), and the rest at random. Ok, now you have the group leaders, right?

So when you draw for the second spot in Group A, throw into a BIG BOWL all of the unseeded UEFA, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, and Asian teams (NOTE: no African teams into the BIG BOWL, as there is already an African team represented), collected from the previously mentioned 2 bowls. Draw from this BIG BOWL. Pick out, I don’t know, Slovenia. Throw out all the balls from the BIG BOWL.

Move on to Group B, where the seeded team is Brazil. Now throw into the BIG BOWL all the balls from the UEFA, CONCACAF, Asia and African regions. And draw from that. Simple enough, right?

Now later when you come back to Group A, which has South Africa and Slovenia… into the BIG BOWL go all the CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, and Asian ball (note, no UEFA or African teams).

It’s really pretty simple, has the advantage of making almost ANY match up possible, and makes sure that regions are spread out as much as possible! This just makes the most sense…

Jose48, that is basically the sameway they do it in the champions league with all the balls…..lol except they have teams seeded 9-16, 17-24, and 25-32 but I wouldn’t be against your idea at all. It actually seems the most fair.

Not quite sure why everyone is so keen to play the Asian teams. N.Korea might be one of the weaker teams, but Japan, S.Korea and Australia will all be tough opponents.

Posted from  Australia

I don’t think Japan or South Korea are that good to be honest with you. Against big opponents, they mostly just counterattack. Australia is the only AFC team I want to avoid..

Posted from  United States

@ Pseudinho: yeah, CL is where I got the idea from… I was actually thinking that it’s possible FIFA might actually use this system this Friday. But maybe that’s just the wine talking.

@ Tom: to be honest, I think it’s more that people want every match up to be possible, not that everyone wants to be grouped with the Asian teams. Although it has to be said that from the bottom up the AFC/OFC has the weakest teams at the tournament. North Korea and New Zealand (with all respect) are due in for #31 and #32.* Japan is still suspect. Australia and South Korea are threats, no doubt about it, but I doubt you’ll find any team coach who’d want to avoid those two over USA and Mexico.**

* North Korea in particular, as they only got by through a combination of their defensive approach w/ quick counterattacks and some pretty terrible attacking from the other Middle Eastern teams (KSA, Iran, and UAE). They’ll be found out against any team outside their confederation.

** Honduras would be slight favorites against the bottom rung Asian teams as well, IMO.

Jose48, I like your idea but would just like to point out that up to 2 UEFA teams can be drawn in a group (as there are 13 teams from Europe). So when you go back to Group A which has South Africa and Slovenia in it, you would still be able to draw UEFA teams, just not African teams.

This is the kind of draw I would most like to see, a random one, but I don’t think FIFA are clever enough to use the 24 bowl system – or they would just be too lazy, cos tbh it is very simple. They would rather use an easy system which would mean splitting into 4 pots, and most likely regional, which is a shame for the confed which gets put with the AFC/OFC teams who to be fair, are the weakest confeds. I say this as New Zealand and North Korea are def the worst 2 teams in the tournament, and I would only put Slovenia, Algeria and Honduras behind South Korea & Japan from the entire teamlist from other confeds. Australia are alright, but not in the top half of the 32 imo anyway, whereas USA and Mexico would have a shout.

Posted from  United Kingdom

Kris, I believe it was two UEFA teams only when one of them was seeded. So only the groups with Spain, France, Italy, England and Germany would have another UEFA team.

I don’t know. I saw in a preview video released by FIFA how they were stressing that the draw should be “clear and easy to follow by anyone”… jaja, maybe that was their way of eliminating this type of approach.

Ok yeah i see your point.

I hope they use this kind of approach, but i can’t see it. Apparantly they are releasing the system they will use on Wednesday so we’ll have to wait and see til then.

Posted from  United Kingdom

Seedings and the draw system is something I have been thinking about.

I agree with Jose above. One thing I do not like with the system used recently is that confederations are paired together in the same point. I agree with the idea of preventing teams (other then UEFA where it cannot be avoided) from the same confederation being in the same group, but why group say African and South American teams together?

Here is what I would do.

Seeded teams – I know the most common system for deciding seeds (although not used for 2006) is a formula based on the last thre world cups. I do not know how it worked so I invented my own. The 7 highest scoring teams would be seeded along with the hosts South Africa. These 7 teams in alphabetical order are Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Oddly enough under my system had France lost their play off to Ireland the team that would have been seeded in their place would have been Paraguay.

How I would do the draw.

1) South Africa are in Group A. The other seeds drawn to groups B through to H.

2) Conveniently there are 8 unseeded UEFA (Europe) teams. Draw one to each group.

3) African teams. Have one pot with the 5 unseeded African teams and another pot with the 7 non African seeds. Draw an African team then draw a seed. The African team then goes in that seed’s group.

4) CONMEBOL (South America). The same again. One pot with the 3 unseeded CONMEBOL teams and another with the 6 non CONMEBOL seeds. Draw a South American team then draw the seed whose group they go into.

This helps to mix things up as it is possible a group may contain both an African and South American team (only for a UEFA seed), one or neither.

5) The final step of the draw would be a pot containing the North America, Asian and Oceanic teams to fill the remaining spaces. Groups may need 0, 1 or 2 teams from this pot. Obviously if a group needs 2 teams they would have to be from different confederations.

I have tried a sample draw with this system using a random number generator. Oddly enough this kept the unseeded African and South American teams apart. The two seeds to avoid an African team were England and Italy. The three that drew a South American team were England, Italy and South Africa.

The groups were.

-A-
South Africa
Paraguay
Netherlands
New Zealand

-B-
France
Nigeria
North Korea
Slovenia

-C-
England
Honduras
Denmark
Chile

-D-
Brazil
Serbia
South Korea
Cote d’Ivorie

-E-
Spain
Switzerland
Austalia
Algeria

-F-
Argentina
Slovakia
Ghana
United States

-G-
Italy
Uruguay
Greece
Mexico

-H-
Germany
Portugal
Cameroon
Japan

Posted from  United Kingdom

I think Korea, Japan and Australia stack up pretty well against the USA, personally.

Particularly with Bradley managing.

I quite like Jose’s system for picking the teams, though. Can’t see any real problems with it.

Posted from  Australia

“I think Korea, Japan and Australia stack up pretty well against the USA, personally.”

It would definitely be a match, but I would put the US as slight favorites against Korea and Japan. But now we’re just getting too specific: what we’re seeing now won’t necessarily be what shows up in South Africa.

Oh, and ESPN has officially launched its World Cup site!! It has a basic run down on every team, a review of the venues, the draw, a “Pick the Best Team Ever” poll, and they even go WAY into depth on about half the countries (seemingly at random: Ghana, Brazil, North Korea, Italy, etc.) Soon enough they’ll even have a Bracket Competition up (after the draw). So. Effin’. Psyched.

There have been several interesting ideas on whether to organize the pots. But I think the best way is having the first pot with the seeded teams and the second pot with only European teams. This is to avoid more than two European teams in a group. It would not be fair to have three European teams in a group because they would eliminate each other. The point is to meet teams from other continents.

I think the weakest group are that from Asia toghether with New Zealand because of their soccer history. But no opponent will be easy and Australia, Japan and South Korea can surprise.

Another interesting situation is which seeded opponents are weakest. I would say South Africa, France, and Argentina. I have great respect for Argentina and I think that under normal circumstances it would be one of the favourits, but Maradona is a very bad coach. France is a weak first seeded team as well as South Africa.

I am sceptical about the high rating of Spain because it has been favourite several times before and never has performed in a World Cup according to the expectations. It is a great team and can win some matches with huge difference of goals, but I doubt of the team’s ability in adversity when beeing two or three goals under. Until now it has not shown the mental strength of Brasil or Germany to fight back. A World Cup is more than pure technical ability. At the last World Cup Brasil had apparently the best team man for man and were eliminated in the quarter finals because some of its players were in bad shape and overweight.

Here’s a novel approach: use the freaking rankings! Why reinvent the wheel? Use a standard 32 team bracket and apply the S curve (Big Dance fans know what this means). And you can still apply special confederation rules :
– no more than 2 UEFA teams in same group
– only one team from each of the other confederations in each group

I know the arguments against the FIFA ranking system (so use a better one; SPI anyone?) and realize that this approach lends itself towards teams “rigging” their rankings in the months coming up to the draw. But for goodness sake, the current draw system is broken, and putting USA in a pot with the dregs of OFC and AFC is just criminal.

So here is how one would applying a basic 32 team bracket with S-curve this time. Start by seeding all 32 teams according to the Oct09 FIFA rankings, regardless of region:

Team Rank Seed Order
———– —- —- —–
Spain 1 1 1
Brazil 2 2 2
Netherlands 3 3 3
Italy 4 4 4
Portugal 5 5 5
Germany 6 6 6
France 7 7 7
Argentina 8 8 8

England 9 9 16
Cameroon 11 10 15
Greece 12 11 14
USA 14 12 13
Mexico 15 13 12
Côte d’Ivoire 16 14 11
Chile 17 15 10
Switzerland 18 16 9

Uruguay 19 17 17
Serbia 20 18 18
Australia 21 19 19
Nigeria 22 20 20
Denmark 26 21 21
Algeria 28 22 22
Paraguay 30 23 23
Slovenia 33 24 24

Slovakia 34 25 32
Ghana 37 26 31
Honduras 38 27 30
Japan 43 28 29
South Korea 52 29 28
New Zealand 77 30 27
North Korea 84 31 26
South Africa 86 32 25

Then put teams in groups A-H,according to the S-curve order:
seeds 1-8 into groups A-H in ORDER
seeds 9-16 into groups A-H in REVERSE ORDER
seeds 17-24 into groups A-H in ORDER
seeds 25-32 into groups A-H in REVERSE ORDER

The “Order” column above reflects this placement. Here is what you get:
A
Spain -1
Switzerland -18
Uruguay -19
South Africa -86
B
Brazil -2
Chile -17 *
Serbia -20
North Korea -84
C
Netherlands -3
Côte d’Ivoire -16
Australia -21
New Zealand -77
D
Italy -4
Mexico -15
Nigeria -22
South Korea -52
E
Portugal -5
USA -14
Denmark -26
Japan -43
F
Germany -6
Greece -12
Algeria -28
Honduras -38
G
France -7
Cameroon -11
Paraguay -30
Ghana -37 *
H
Argentina -8
England -9
Slovenia -33
Slovakia -34 *

The teams marked with an asterisk break one of the two confederation rules, and therefore need to be shifted up or down one group to fix the problem. This is easily done, especially in groups G and H by swapping Ghana and Slovakia

The final result:

A
Spain -1
Chile -17
Uruguay -19
South Africa -86
B
Brazil -2
Switzerland -18
Serbia -20
North Korea -84
C
Netherlands -3
Côte d’Ivoire -16
Australia -21
New Zealand -77
D
Italy -4
Mexico -15
Nigeria -22
South Korea -52
E
Portugal -5
USA -14
Denmark -26
Japan -43
F
Germany -6
Greece -12
Algeria -28
Honduras -38
G
France -7
Cameroon -11
Paraguay -30
Slovakia -34
H
Argentina -8
England -9
Slovenia -33
Ghana -37

These groupings are MUCH fairer than anything we are likely to see tomorrow. Which means that FIFA, in its infinite stupidity and corruption, will never get anywhere near them.

Posted from  United States