Socceroos Look Ahead To World Cup Draw

By Author: Betezy
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The Socceroos are looking ahead to the 2010 World Cup draw at 5pm Friday night (early Saturday AEDT).

The 32 World Cup qualifiers have been placed in four pots of eight, with one from each pot to be randomly assigned to each four-team group.

No two teams from the same qualifying zone can be drawn together, except in the case of Europe, where the limit is two.

So for example, Argentina could not be paired with Uruguay and South Africa cannot be in the same group as Ghana.

The Socceroos (FIFA ranking 24) are in pot two, with Japan, South Korea and North Korea, north/central American teams USA, Mexico and Honduras, and New Zealand, so they cannot be grouped with any of those sides according to the zoning rules.

Seven of the world's best - Brazil, who have won the World Cup 5 times, Italy the current world champions, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Holland and England - are seeded in pot one. The odd one out in this pot is South Africa, who are ranked at the bottom, but as the host nation, automatically go into pot one.

Amazingly, France and Portugal both missed seedings despite being ranked ...
... inside the world's top seven. These 2 powerful teams are in pot four.

An ideal scenario for Australia would be to draw South Africa (FIFA ranking 86), Slovakia (34th) and Paraguay (30th), a group they could actually aspire to top.