World Cup 2010 Groups: Who Plays Who in South Africa

December 4th, 2009 | by: Daryl | Comments (49)

The draw for South Africa 2010 is done. We have our eight World Cup groups and they’re listed below. They’re listed below for reference and discussion, and we’ll add some analysis (group strength by FIFA ranking etc) as we go.

Group A:
South Africa
Mexico
Uruguay
France

Group B:
Argentina
Nigeria
South Korea
Greece

Group C:
England
USA
Algeria
Slovenia

Group D:
Germany
Australia
Serbia
Ghana

Group E:
Netherlands
Denmark
Japan
Cameroon

Group F:
Italy
Paraguay
New Zealand
Slovakia

Group G:
Brazil
North Korea
Cote d’Ivoire
Portugal

Group H:
Spain
Switzerland
Honduras
Chile

A very generous friend volunteered to sit down with a calculator and the FIFA world rankings and figure out which group was the strongest. Here are the groups’ total FIFA world ranking (the rankings of all four teams combined.) The lower the number, the tougher the group, obviously:

Group A: 127
Group B: 94
Group C: 84
Group D: 84
Group E: 83
Group F: 145
Group G: 107
Group H: 74

So mathematically Group H (Spain, Switzerland, Chile, Honduras) is the toughest group. But that’s mostly because there’s no low low team in there, like 84th ranked North Korea which drags down the standard of Group G for example.