The World Cup Draw - my best guess

Since everyone else has been speculating on what's going to happen in the World Cup draw on Friday, I thought it would be fun to add my two cents to the discussion. Because as you all know, I am nothing if not opinionated. The more I think about things, the more convinced I am that there will be six European No. 1 seeds and two South American No. 1 seeds. The reason is two-fold: The World Cup is being held in Europe, so why not pander to the "hometown" fans. Also, it will make the math surrounding the rest of the teams fairly easy, as you will see. Plus, FIFA really doesn't care about Mexico (not like they deserve a No. 1 seed anyway). So, with that said, my predictions on the top seeds are: Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Spain. I'm sure that FIFA would dearly love to have the Czech Republic as a top seed, given its seeming fascination with the team based on the world rankings (not to mention what that would mean to Eastern Europe) but not even Sepp Blatter and Co. can justify seeding Czech ahead of Holland when Holland beat them in the qualifying group. So that's eight down, six from UEFA and two from CONMEBOL. Which means that the other three, geographically-balanced pots, might look like this: Pot B: Remaining eight UEFA teams (Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine) Pot C: Four CONCACAF teams, four AFC teams (Costa Rica, Mexico, Trinidad, USA, Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea) Pot D: Five CAF teams, remaining two CONMEBOL teams, one OFC team (Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Tunisia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Australia) So that's my thoughts on the subject. Yours? Jonathan

-- Jonathan @ RGB Cards @ 12/05/2005 01:56:00 PM