When FIFA and host nation Qatar stage the
draw ceremony show Friday, three of the 32 entries will be placeholders because
the three-year qualifying program was delayed and still ongoing.
A once-in-a-century global health crisis
and the war in Ukraine made sure of that.
It means 37 nations will be involved on
Friday, including five which will ultimately not play in November when the
first “winter” World Cup kicks off.
The full lineup will not be known until at
least June 14, when the intercontinental playoff round ends in Qatar. That is
74 days after the draw and the same date the 2018 tournament started in Russia.
Maybe FIFA got lucky seven years ago by
moving the 2022 tournament to November and December to avoid the searing desert
heat of Qatar’s summer.
The later start created wriggle room to
clear the match backlog after the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out almost every
national-team game outside Europe in 2020.
It has also put uncertainty on stage at the
Doha Exhibition & Convention Center, where the show Friday starts at 7 p.m.
(1600 GMT) and lasts one hour.
One of the balls being drawn from pot 4 of
low-ranked teams will represent “Peru or Australia or the United Arab
Emirates.” Another is “Ukraine or Wales or Scotland.”
So it goes at this major World Cup
milestone, in perhaps its most unlikely host nation, on April 1.
Here’s a look at this unusual World Cup
draw.
FIRST-TIMER QATAR
One sure thing is Qatar will be the
top-seeded team in Group A, taking position A1 in the schedule of 64 matches in
just 28 days.
The privilege is given to all host nations
even when ranked No. 65 in the world, as Russia was. Qatar is currently No. 52.
Still, the 2019 Asian Cup winner is the
exception among modern World Cup hosts, having never before qualified for the
finals. Qatar’s debut opens the tournament on Monday, Nov. 21 at Al Bayt
Stadium.
It means in the group stage Qatar avoids
the world’s top-ranked teams, from Nos. 1 to 7 — Brazil, Belgium, France,
Argentina, England, Spain and Portugal.
Those countries will be the next seven
drawn out of top-seeded pot 1 and allocated in turn to Groups B through H.
HOW THE SEEDING WORKS
Seeding pots are filled according to FIFA
rankings which weigh results over several years and are officially updated
Thursday.
The next eight highest-ranked qualifiers go
into pot 2, which is the second to be drawn. It includes Germany and likely the
United States and Mexico after Wednesday’s qualifying games.
Next is pot 3 with teams ranked in the 20s
by FIFA and finally pot 4 including Canada, back in the World Cup after a
36-year gap. Canada is in pot 4 despite leading the North American qualifying
group.
The simple format is now complicated by the
three playoff entries delayed to June: The European bracket containing Ukraine,
which cannot currently prepare a team, and the two intercontinental playoffs.
FIFA weighted those entries downward into
pot 4 according to the lowest-ranked potential qualifiers, such as Scotland,
New Zealand and the UAE.
Higher-ranked playoff teams Peru and Wales
face being seeded below their true level.
GEOGRAPHY LESSON
Geography also limits potential match-ups.
Teams from the same continent generally can’t go in the same group, except for
some Europeans. Europe has 13 of the 31 qualifying slots and they cannot all
avoid each other.
Five groups get two European teams, and the
other three groups each get one. It means 2014 winner Germany from pot 2 can
land with defending champion France.
FIXTURE SCHEDULE
Each four-team group is a round-robin of
six games in total. The order each team plays the other is decided by another
draw within the ceremony.
After each team is drawn, a subsequent ball
— numbered 1, 2, 3 or 4 — is picked to place that country in the fixture grid.
This unpredictability means the two
highest-ranked teams in a group could meet in any of the three rounds.
KNOCKOUT STAGE
The 32-team lineup is the perfect number
for a knockout bracket. The top two teams in each group — where goal difference
is the first tiebreaker — advance to the round of 16.
A team’s path through to the quarterfinals,
semifinals and final is set in the bracket. If Qatar advances as the Group A
winner, it must then play the Group B runner-up.
Teams which advance from the same group
cannot meet again until the final.
GOOD DRAW, BAD DRAW?
Is there a “good” or “bad” section of the
draw to land in?
Maybe yes at this congested tournament,
which will be four days shorter than the 2018 edition in Russia.
Landing in Group B means starting on Nov.
21 instead of Nov. 24 in Group G or H. That means three extra rest days.
The Group G winner would have to play seven
games in just 25 days to win the title. That team also gets just two full days
off before a round of 16 game on Dec. 5.
Why is the schedule so tight? This World
Cup is jammed into an enforced break in domestic league seasons in Europe.
Reluctant to lose lucrative weekend
broadcast slots, Europe’s top leagues ensured they will play through Nov. 13 —
just eight days before kickoff in Qatar.
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