The 32 qualified teams and the final pots for the World Cup draw
The Super Eagles of Nigeria have been placed in Pot 4 ahead of the 2018 Fifa World Cup draw billed for Friday, December 1 in Russia.The pots were announced by FIFA on their official website on Thursday.
It was confirmed in September, by the Organising Committee for FIFA Competitions, that all teams will be allocated to (eight-team) pots 1 to 4 based on sporting principles.
The October 2017 edition of the FIFA world ranking will be used to allocate all qualified teams to the four pots according to their ranking in descending order, after hosts Russia who take the top seeding spot.
As it is, Nigeria will draw one team each from Pot 1, Pot 2 and Pot 3, which are perceived to have stronger sides than Pot 4.
With the pots confirmed, the Super Eagles might be drawn against world heavyweights like champions Germany, Argentina, Brazil, France, who are all in Pot 1.
Other teams in Pot 1 are hosts Russia, Belgium, Poland, Portugal.
Following Peru’s qualification, all 32 teams are now officially qualified for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and as such, the pots that will determine the groups can now be presented in full.
The official draw for the group stage will take place in Moscow on December 1, and Australia will go directly into pot four because they occupy a position in the FIFA rankings that is lower than every single member of pot three.Serbia, Nigeria, Japan, Morocco, Panama, South Korea and Saudi Arabia make up the rest of pot four.
Peru will be placed in pot two courtesy of their ranking of 10th in the official FIFA standings, a higher rank than all of the teams in pot three and four.It is worth remembering that the principle of drawing the teams into the groups will remain unchanged.
This means that no teams from the same confederation, with the exception of UEFA, which could have up to two teams in the same group, will be drawn into the same group. Therefore England and Germany could be drawn in a group together, for example, but Argentina could not play any of Colombia, Uruguay or Peru.
