The U.S. Men’s National Team has been placed in Pot 2 alongside fellow CONCACAF qualifiers Mexico and Honduras, as well as the Asia and Oceania qualifiers for the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final Draw, FIFA announced today.
The Final Draw will be held Friday, Dec. 4, in Cape Town, South Africa, and will air live at 12 p.m. ET on ESPN2 and live at 11 a.m. ET on Univision. Fans can also follow along via DrawTracker, ussoccer.com’s extensive live coverage, and at twitter.com/ussoccer.
With no CONCACAF team placed as one of the eight seeds, the U.S. could be placed in any of the eight groups with any of the eight seeded teams in Pot 1. The remaining two U.S. opponents will come one each from Pot 3, which includes African and South American teams, and Pot 4, which includes the unseeded European teams.
Pots
Pot 1: South Africa (hosts), Argentina, Brazil, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain
Pot 2: Australia, Honduras, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, United States
Pot 3: Algeria, Cameroon, Chile, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Paraguay, Uruguay
Pot 4: Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland
In summary, the U.S. will play one team each from Pot 1, Pot 3 and Pot 4, and will have no chance of facing the four Asian qualifiers, New Zealand and the other two CONCACAF qualifiers.
“In regards to our group, I think it was expected the three CONCACAF teams would be grouped with the four teams from Asia and New Zealand, so that certainly was not a surprise,” said U.S. head coach Bob Bradley. “The one big question in terms of seeds was whether a seed would go to the Netherlands or to France, and I think the choice of the Netherlands being a top seed certainly caught some people a little bit surprised.
“It will still come down to the luck of the draw. You certainly know that you’ll get a team from each of the other three pots, and you just wait to see how the balls come out.” (More Quotes)
The 32 qualified teams will be divided into eight groups. No two teams from the same confederation will be drawn into the same group, with the exception of Europe which can have a maximum of two teams in the same group.
As hosts, FIFA announced that South Africa will automatically be positioned as A1, and the other teams from Pot 1 will be drawn into Position 1 in groups B-H. For the remaining pots, the teams will be drawn into groups A to H and Positions 2-4 during the draw.
source: u.s. soccer
