Trending: FIFA 2022 World Cup Draw - The Results

After over two years of World Cup qualifier competitions across all six football confederations, twenty-nine teams out of thirty-two have booked their places in Qatar. Three spots have still to be decided. However, the draw for the 2022 tournament has been completed, with placeholders for the final three to reserve their slots.

The FIFA 2022 World Cup draw took place in Doha, the capital of Qatar, on Friday, April 1st, giving the world something that it has been waiting for...the all-important group list stating who will be going head-to-head in the first stages of the competition.

The thirty-two teams in contention have been drawn into eight groups of four for the upcoming knockout tournament. Each group's opponents will face one another in a round-robin format at the competition's Group Stage. At the end of the Group Stage, the top two squads from each group will advance to the Round of 16. So, the teams that make up each group are important…will the groupings give any favourable pairings, or are some teams going to be fighting an uphill battle from the start? Let's find out…

The Draw

Prior to the April 1st draw, the thirty-two teams appearing at the World Cup this November were split into four Pots, determined by the latest FIFA Rankings.

Pot 1:

Pot 1 consisted of the World Cup host Qatar and seven of the highest-ranked teams:

Brazil, Belgium, France, Argentina, England, Spain and Portugal. 

Pot 2:

Pot 2 comprised the next eight highest-ranked teams:

Mexico, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Uruguay, Switzerland, the USA and Croatia.

Pot 3:

Pot 3 was made up of the next eight highest-ranked teams after Pot 2:

Senegal, Iran, Japan, Morocco, Serbia, Poland, South Korea and Tunisia.

Pot 4:

Pot 4 included the next five highest-ranked teams after Pot 3 and the three placeholder places for the as yet to be determined nations:

Cameroon, Canada, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Ghana and either:

Wales, Scotland or Ukraine;

Costa Rica or New Zealand;

Peru, the UAE or Australia.

Teams Yet To Qualify

Three teams are yet to qualify:

1. The UEFA 2022 World Cup playoffs, to decide which runners-up from the main qualifiers competition would bag the final three tickets available to European nations, were interrupted by the Russian war on Ukraine. Russia was ousted from the competition, and Ukraine's semi-final playoff match against Scotland was postponed for obvious reasons. The deciding game between the two nations will, hopefully, go ahead in June 2022. Whichever team wins the battle will face off against Wales, who beat their semi-final opponent Austria. The final between Wales and either Scotland or Ukraine will also go ahead in June.
2. Costa Rica and New Zealand, runners-up from the qualifier competitions in North, Central America and the Caribbean and Oceania, will go head-to-head on June 13/14th for a final shot at the 2022 tournament.
3. Peru, the runner-up from the South American qualifier competition, will also battle in a head-to-head on June 13/14th for a final shot at the 2022 tournament. They will face off against the winner of a single-leg playoff (June 7th) between the runners-up from the Asian qualifiers, the UEA and Australia.

The draw itself was organised to ensure that each of the eight groups contained one team from each of the four pots available. Pot 1 was drawn first, with one of each team placed in each of the eight groups. Qatar was pre-drawn and placed in the first group, A1. The rest of the teams were drawn randomly and assigned a group. Once Pot 1 had been emptied, Pot 2 was drawn, and so on until all the teams in the pots were assigned.

The Results

The following groups were generated from the random draw (teams from the same confederation were kept apart, except for European teams, due to the high number of UEFA teams involved):  

Group A:

A1 - Qatar

A2 - Ecuador

A3 - Senegal

A4 - Netherlands

Group B:

A1 - England

A2 - IR Iran

A3 - USA

A4 - Scotland/Ukraine/Wales

Group C:

A1 - Argentina

A2 - Saudi Arabia

A3 - Mexico

A4 - Poland

Group D:

A1 - France

A2 - Australia/UAE/Peru

A3 - Denmark

A4 - Tunisia

Group E:

A1 - Spain

A2 - Costa Rica/New Zealand

A3 - Germany

A4 - Japan

Group F:

A1 - Belgium

A2 - Canada

A3 - Morocco

A4 - Croatia

Group G:

A1 - Brazil

A2 - Serbia

A3 - Switzerland

A4 - Cameroon

Group H:

A1 - Portugal

A2 - Ghana

A3 - Uruguay

A4 - South Korea

Now, coaches and managers for the thirty-two teams competing at the World Cup will begin to map out their 'winning' strategies based on who they are playing within their group, their history with those teams and the stand out opponent players. While some groups might seem more challenging than others, and all groups have a top and bottom-ranked squad, there will be no easy rides. Every team will be looking to gain as many points as possible in each game to guarantee their place at the next level of the tournament, and lower-ranked teams will be ready to challenge those at the top to make their mark on football history.