The top-seeded teams for the Dec. 5 World Cup tournament draw were set Wednesday when FIFA published new rankings the day after the direct qualifying rounds for next summer’s marquee tournament concluded.
Top-ranked Spain is followed by defending champion Argentina, France, England, Portugal, Brazil, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
World Cup co-hosts the United States, Canada and Mexico will be joined by those nine teams in the pot of No. 1 seeds for next summer’s 48-team tournament.
Croatia, a semifinalist in 2022 and beaten finalist by France in 2018, was brought down into pot 2 for the draw ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
Intercontinental, European Playoff Teams Set
The updated FIFA rankings also decided seeding for the draw Thursday for playoff brackets in March that will decide the final six entries in the expanded 48-nation lineup.
The 22 playoffs teams include 16 in Europe playing for four World Cup places and six from the other regions chasing two spots in the intercontinental brackets.
Italy is the headliner in the European brackets as the four-time world champion aims to avoid a humiliating third straight exit in the playoffs.
The 12th-ranked Italians were pushed into the playoffs after finishing runner-up in a qualifying group won by Norway. Erling Haaland’s Norwegian team shapes as a dangerous option from pot 3 in two weeks’ time.
Italy will be drawn Thursday at home against a fourth-seeded team. It could again be North Macedonia, which shockingly eliminated the Italians in 2022.
The winner on March 26 advances to a playoff final five days later against the team that emerges from the No. 2 seed vs. No. 3 seed pairing in its knockout bracket. Home advantage in the single-game playoff finals will be decided by the draw Thursday and not by the FIFA ranking.
The teams that eventually emerge from the four separate European playoff brackets are expected to be placeholders from low-ranked pot 4 in the Dec. 5 draw.
The intercontinental brackets will see top-seeded Iraq and Congo each await the winner of playoff semifinals that involve Bolivia, Jamaica, New Caledonia and Suriname.
European playoffs seeding:
Pot 1: Italy, Denmark, Turkey, Ukraine.
Pot 2: Poland, Wales, Czech Republic, Slovakia.
Pot 3: Ireland, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo.
Pot 4: Northern Ireland, Romania, Sweden, North Macedonia.
Intercontinental playoffs:
Seeded: Congo, Iraq.
Unseeded: Bolivia, Jamaica, New Caledonia, Suriname.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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