2010 FIFA World Cup Final Draw: Part 1-The Basics

Speculation are ripe about the formula that FIFA could use to seed the teams before the draw on Dec 4. FIFA’s World Cup organising committee are expected to confirm the eight seeds at a meeting in Cape Town on ­December 2, two days before the draw. These 8 seeds would then avoid each other in the Group Stages.

If we consider that FIFA would use the same formula as for 2006 world cup where last two worldcup performances and last 3 years FIFA rankings are taken into account, then following is the list of teams that would be seeded as follows:

Seed      Team

1            Brazil
4            Spain
7            France
3            Italy
2            Germany
5            England
6            Argentina
8            South Africa
Note: The seeds were calculated using the exact formula that FIFA used in 2006.

These 8 teams would make it to Pot#1 of the draw with each group headed by one of these teams. Rest of the teams would not be seeded and 4 pots would be used to group teams from every continent such that no more than 2 European teams end up in the same group and no more than one country from South America, Africa and Asia is in any group. Pot# 2 consists of all the remaining European nations and the third and fourth pots will divide the remaining qualifiers from the CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, African, Asia, and Oceania regions. Based on the above, following are the four Pots for the final draw. Exactly one team from each pot would make it to each group.

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

Pot 2: Portugal, Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, Greece, Denmark, Serbia, Slovakia

Pot 3: Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Ghana, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Algeria

Pot 4: South Korea, Japan, Australia, North Korea, Mexico, USA, Honduras, New Zealand
 
With one team to be picked from each pot to form a group, draw would be of enormous scale for each of the top teams.
 
Following are the list of references used to calculate exact seeds and rankings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup_seeding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_FIFA_World_Cup_full_team_ranking
http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/ranking/
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/293526-world-cup-draw-2010-england-set-for-seeding-boost