Qatar will step an inch closer to hosting the FIFA World Cup later this year, with the draw for the football’s showpiece event to be held on Friday.
The who’s who of the football world will converge at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, where the show will start at 7pm, with 29 qualified teams set to know their opponents. The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy has promised few surprises on the sidelines of the event, but the teams will be hoping they do not have to draw tough opponents in the group stages to begin with.
Qatar, who will be making their World Cup debut, have been seeded along with the seven top-ranked teams. As hosts, Qatar are in Pot 1 and will be represented by a different-coloured ball and pre-assigned to position A1. The Asian Champions will avoid facing new World No.1 Brazil, Belgium, defending champions France, Argentina, England, Spain and Portugal until the knockout rounds.
Pot 2 is populated by the next eight highest-ranked qualifiers and includes the United States, Mexico, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Uruguay, Switzerland and Croatia while Pot 3 is made up of next eight best-ranked qualified teams: Senegal, Iran, Japan, Morocco, Serbia, Poland, South Korea and Tunisia.
For the first time in the World Cup's 92-year history, three of the 32 entries in the draw will be placeholders because the three-year qualifying program was delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic, and is still ongoing.
It means 37 nations will be involved in the draw today, including five which will ultimately not play when the first World Cup kicks off on November 21. 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 and Costa Rica or New Zealand.
The rest of Pot 4 includes Cameroon, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Ghana along with Canada. The full line-up will not be known until at least June 14, with three qualification spots still to be contested, with one European and two Intercontinental Play-Offs still to be played.
No country from the same confederation can be drawn against each other with two exceptions. As Europe has 13 teams in the draw and there are only eight groups, some groups will contain more than one nation from the UEFA qualifiers. The same applies to any team coming from the intercontinental playoffs.
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.
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 quarter-finals, semi-finals 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.
The draw will be attended by 2,000 guests and will be hosted by former US international and FIFA Women’s World Cup winner Carli Lloyd, former footballer and English television presenter Jermaine Jenas and anchor Samantha Johnson.
The trio will be assisted by the likes of former footballers Cafu (Brazil), Lothar Matthaus (Germany), Adel Ahmed MalAllah (Qatar), Ali Daei (Iran), Jay-Jay Okocha (Nigeria), Rabah Madjer (Algeria), Tim Cahill (Australia) and Bora Milutinovic (Serbia), who as coach steered five different teams to consecutive World Cups – Mexico (1986), Costa Rica (1990), United States (1994), Nigeria (1998) and China (2022).
The draw will serve as a giant milestone for Qatar, which has left no stone unturned to host the Middle East’s first FIFA World Cup. Since winning the historic bid in 2010, Qatar has always been ahead of the progress in terms of getting the infrastructure ready.
Seven of the eight stadiums that will host the matches are already operational with Lusail Stadium, which will host the final on December 19 waiting to be inaugurated.
At the FIFA Congress yesterday, the global governing body’s President Gianni Infantino said Qatar would host ‘a fantastic World Cup because it would be a unique tournament.’
"It will be a great celebration, a great celebration of humanity, bringing the world together, an opportunity for the Arab world to present itself to the entire world, and an opportunity for the entire world to come and meet the Arab world, its culture, its history, and to celebrate all together," Infantino said.
The who’s who of the football world will converge at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, where the show will start at 7pm, with 29 qualified teams set to know their opponents. The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy has promised few surprises on the sidelines of the event, but the teams will be hoping they do not have to draw tough opponents in the group stages to begin with.
Qatar, who will be making their World Cup debut, have been seeded along with the seven top-ranked teams. As hosts, Qatar are in Pot 1 and will be represented by a different-coloured ball and pre-assigned to position A1. The Asian Champions will avoid facing new World No.1 Brazil, Belgium, defending champions France, Argentina, England, Spain and Portugal until the knockout rounds.
Pot 2 is populated by the next eight highest-ranked qualifiers and includes the United States, Mexico, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Uruguay, Switzerland and Croatia while Pot 3 is made up of next eight best-ranked qualified teams: Senegal, Iran, Japan, Morocco, Serbia, Poland, South Korea and Tunisia.
For the first time in the World Cup's 92-year history, three of the 32 entries in the draw will be placeholders because the three-year qualifying program was delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic, and is still ongoing.
It means 37 nations will be involved in the draw today, including five which will ultimately not play when the first World Cup kicks off on November 21. 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 and Costa Rica or New Zealand.
The rest of Pot 4 includes Cameroon, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia and Ghana along with Canada. The full line-up will not be known until at least June 14, with three qualification spots still to be contested, with one European and two Intercontinental Play-Offs still to be played.
No country from the same confederation can be drawn against each other with two exceptions. As Europe has 13 teams in the draw and there are only eight groups, some groups will contain more than one nation from the UEFA qualifiers. The same applies to any team coming from the intercontinental playoffs.
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.
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 quarter-finals, semi-finals 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.
The draw will be attended by 2,000 guests and will be hosted by former US international and FIFA Women’s World Cup winner Carli Lloyd, former footballer and English television presenter Jermaine Jenas and anchor Samantha Johnson.
The trio will be assisted by the likes of former footballers Cafu (Brazil), Lothar Matthaus (Germany), Adel Ahmed MalAllah (Qatar), Ali Daei (Iran), Jay-Jay Okocha (Nigeria), Rabah Madjer (Algeria), Tim Cahill (Australia) and Bora Milutinovic (Serbia), who as coach steered five different teams to consecutive World Cups – Mexico (1986), Costa Rica (1990), United States (1994), Nigeria (1998) and China (2022).
The draw will serve as a giant milestone for Qatar, which has left no stone unturned to host the Middle East’s first FIFA World Cup. Since winning the historic bid in 2010, Qatar has always been ahead of the progress in terms of getting the infrastructure ready.
Seven of the eight stadiums that will host the matches are already operational with Lusail Stadium, which will host the final on December 19 waiting to be inaugurated.
At the FIFA Congress yesterday, the global governing body’s President Gianni Infantino said Qatar would host ‘a fantastic World Cup because it would be a unique tournament.’
"It will be a great celebration, a great celebration of humanity, bringing the world together, an opportunity for the Arab world to present itself to the entire world, and an opportunity for the entire world to come and meet the Arab world, its culture, its history, and to celebrate all together," Infantino said.
