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If The World Cup Draw Were Held Today (June 2017)


We are half a year away from the draw for the 2018 World Cup, and we just completed another weekend of World Cup Qualifying-- and it was a big one. Thus, it's time for another mock World Cup Draw! For comparison purposes, here was the mock draw from March. And to refresh your memory, here's how I conducted the draw:

The Qualified Teams

  • To determine the 31 squads (in addition to hosts Russia) who would qualify, I mostly went by their current standings in their qualifying groups. This resulted in some pretty major exclusions, perhaps unsurprisingly. But good news! The USA is comfortably in the mix now. There are some noteworthy other countries in a precarious situation, however, as you will surely notice from their conspicuous absences.

  • In cases of tiebreakers within groups, or to determine playoff results, I relied on the June FIFA Rankings, which are far from a perfect determination of quality, but hey, it's what they use, so what else can I do?

  • One major exception...no, no exception this time. After Hungary's capitulation to Andorra, I can no longer entertain a scenario wherein Portugal misses the Euro Cup.

The Seeding

  • For Pot 1, Russia was seeded first (per tradition), and the next 7 spots were allocated in order based on the FIFA Rankings of the qualified teams

  • Here's where it gets funky: because there were so many South American teams seeded in Pot 1, and Europe gets 13 qualifying spots, there were not enough and too many, respectively, to make up a usual Pot size of 8 teams. So:

  • Going off a similar system used in the 2014 Cup Draw, I set up a "Special" pot, consisting of the only non-seeded South American team, and the two lowest-ranked European sides

  • To ensure that there wouldn't be 3 European nations in one group (which would be against FIFA rules), I would automatically draw Uruguay into the first European seeded team's group, besides Russia, and Northern Ireland and Serbia into the first two South American seeds' groups

  • Pots 2, 3 and 4 respectively consisted of African teams, Asian and North American teams, and European teams

  • Here were the spots for the final draw:

The Draw

  • To simulate the draw process, I used a number generator from www.random.org

  • With Pot A, I generated a random integer 1-8 to distribute the seeded teams to the tops of their respective groups

  • For the remaining Pots, I used the 1-8 range to randomly generate the teams' group, and a 2-4 range to determine their position in said group-- with the aforementioned exception of Northern Ireland, Sweden and Uruguay.

Here was how the final draw played out:​

The Ramifications

As much joy as it would bring American fans watching the Mexican team stuck in that murderer's row, the US wouldn't exactly love the depth of their group either. ("Of course! The US in a hard group? No way!!", say millions of embittered fans.) While Northern Ireland would be the scrappy underdog of the bunch, the USMNT would face quite the uphill battle against South American champions as well as Cristiano Ronaldo and co. (for the 2nd consecutive Cup).

The hosts actually have a (hypothetical) winnable group! Most of our projections have had them mired in a difficult fixture list, but while Switzerland and Japan would both have trap game potential, it's not hard to see the Russians coming out of Group A on top.

This would be the 3rd straight World Cup that Argentina had Nigeria in their group, and the 2nd straight that saw the two of them in a group with Iran. Just a fun (hypothetical) fact.

Anyways, here's how I see this draw going down:

Quarterfinals

Portugal vs. Germany

Brazil vs. Belgium

Chile vs. France

Argentina vs. Spain

Semifinals

Germany vs. Brazil

France vs. Argentina

Final

Brazil vs. France

(Spoiler alert for future draws: if possible, all roads are going to lead to Brazil vs. France for yours truly.)

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