Dutch and USA unseeded for World Cup draw
England have been named as one of the seeds for next summer's World Cup finals in Germany.
World Cup organisers announced in Leipzig today that Sven-Goran Eriksson's side will be one of the eight top teams who will be kept apart for the group stage of the tournament.
The rest of the teams will be drawn on a geographical basis so that, for example, two African sides are not in the same group.
Hosts Germany, holders Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Spain and France are also seeded meaning England will avoid playing any of those heavyweights in the group stage of the competition.
England actually came out second behind Brazil in the system used by FIFA to determine the seedings.
The system looked at teams' record in the 2002 and 1998 finals and their world ranking over the last three years.
The USA and Holland have both just missed out on being seeded.
Under the seedings system Brazil have 64 points followed by England (51), Spain (50), Germany (48), Mexico (47), France (46), Argentina (44) and Italy (44). The USA had 43 points and Holland 38.
Under the new seeding system, performances at the 2002 World Cup were given twice as much weight as at 1998, and the only surprise was that FIFA decided against using performances at the 1994 finals.
That greatly helped England who did not qualify for 1994 but made the quarter-finals in Japan and Korea for years ago.
World Cup organising committee official Jim Brown told a news conference: 'We decided just to use the past two World Cups because they are the only ones that have had 32 teams participating. In 1994, there were only 24 teams so using just the last two tournaments seemed to make sense.'
Germany will be in Group A and Brazil in Group F, but the other sides will not know their groups until the actual draw on Friday.
Brown added: 'Those two teams have been allocated to those groups as hosts and holders because we can guarantee them the larger facilities and the larger stadiums in the competition.'
FIFA's World Cup Organising Committee announced the following four groups of seedings for next year's finals on Tuesday:
Pool One: Germany (hosts), Brazil (champions), Italy, France, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, England
Pool Two: Australia, Angola, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Tunisia, Ecuador, Paraguay
Pool Three: Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine
Pool Four: Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago, United States
Special pot: Serbia & Montenegro
The full draw for the finals takes place in Leipzig on Friday. The finals start on June 9 and end on July 9, 2006.
More to follow...
