Football Media

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The 12 winners of these ties get drawn into three groups of four. The top two from each group advance to a final six team round robin. From there, the top three teams get World Cup glory, with the fourth place team facing a scary playoff against a South American team.

Group 1A: USA v Dominica or Barbados
Group 1B: Guatemala v Turks and Caicos Islands or St Lucia
Group 1C: Trinidad and Tobago v Bermuda or Cayman Islands
Group 1D: Cuba v Aruba or Antigua and Barbuda

Group 2A: Mexico v Belize or St Kitts and St Nevis
Group 2B: Jamaica v Bahamas or British Virgin Islands
Group 2C: Honduras v Dominican Republic or Puerto Rica
Group 2D: Canada v St Vincent and the Grenadines

Group 3A: Costa Rica v US Virgin Islands or Grenada
Group 3B: Guyana v Suriname or Montserrat
Group 3C: Panama v El Salvador or Anguilla
Group 3D: Nicaragua v Netherlands Antilles

The 12 group winners and eight best runners-up go through to a second group stage, where the 20 teams are placed into five groups of four. The five group winners go to the finals. African teams have to work hard to qualify.

Group 1: Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Tanzania, Mauritius.
Group 2: Guinea, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Kenya.
Group 3: Angola, Benin, Uganda, Niger.
Group 4: Nigeria, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone.
Group 5: Ghana, Libya, Gabon, Lesotho.
Group 6: Liberia, Algeria, Senegal, Gambia.
Group 7: Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Botswana, Madagascar.
Group 8: Morocco, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mauritania.
Group 9: Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Seychelles.
Group 10: Mali, Congo, Sudan, Chad.
Group 11: Togo, Eritrea, Zambia, Swaziland.
Group 12: Epypt, Congo DR, Malawi, Djibouti

All 53 UEFA member associations entered the draw for the FIFA World Cup. There are eight groups of six teams and one of five, with each side playing home and away against the others in the section. The nine group winners will advance to the 2010 finals in South Africa, while the eight best runners-up will contest four play-off matches to determine Europe’s other four finalists.

Group 1
Portugal
Sweden
Denmark
Hungary
Albania
Malta

Group 2
Greece
Israel
Switzerland
Moldova
Latvia
Luxembourg

Group 3
Czech Republic
Poland
Northern Ireland
Slovakia
Slovenia
San Marino

Group 4
Germany
Russia
Finland
Wales
Azerbaijan
Liechtenstein

Group 5
Spain
Turkey
Belgium
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Armenia
Estonia

Group 6
Croatia
England
Ukraine
Belarus
Kazakhstan
Andorra

Group 7
France
Romania
Serbia
Lithuania
Austria
Faroe Islands

Group 8
Italy
Bulgaria
Republic of Ireland
Cyprus
Georgia
Montenegro

Group 9
Netherlands
Scotland
Norway
F.Y.R. Macedonia
Iceland

Place: KKL, Lucerne / Switzerland

Time: 12.00

Duration: 50 minutes ______________________________________________________________________________________ Basic conditions

• 16 teams will participate in the final competition of the UEFA European Football Championship 2006/08™. They will be divided into 4 groups of 4 teams each (Groups A to D).

• As host associations, Switzerland and Austria are automatically qualified and have already been seeded: Switzerland as A1, Austria as B1.

Team ranking and pot allocation

• The remaining 14 teams are classified on the basis of their results in the qualifying competitions for the FIFA World Cup 2004/2006™ and the UEFA European Football Championship 2006/2008™ and allocated into 4 Pots (Pot 1-4). Greece will be seeded as reigning European Champions and placed into Pot 1 (see article 7.04 of the Competition Regulations).

• The pot allocation is as follows:

- Pot 1: team with coefficient ranking 1 and Greece

- Pot 2: teams with coefficient rankings 2-5

- Pot 3: teams with coefficient rankings 6-9

- Pot 4: teams with coefficient rankings 10-13

• According to the Competition Regulations, the two teams in Pot 1 are seeded. They will therefore be drawn into the first position of groups C and D. In order to determine the position of the remaining 12 teams in the respective groups, there are four additional pots (Pots a-d), containing 3 balls each:

- Pot a: balls A2, A3 and A4

- Pot b: balls B2, B3 and B4

- Pot c: balls C2, C3 and C4

- Pot d: balls D2, D3 and D4

The positions in the group determine the compilation of the match fixture list.
Draw procedure

Considering that the host associations are automatically qualified and have already been allocated into position A1 (Switzerland) and position B1 (Austria), the draw starts with Pot 1 in order to fill the first position in each group.

• A first ball is drawn from Pot 1 and the drawn team is placed into the first position of Group C. Thereafter, the second ball from Pot 1 is drawn and the respective team is placed into the first position of Group D.

The Draw continues with Pot 4 and ends with Pot 2.

• A ball is drawn from Pot 4 and placed into Group A. In order to determine the position of the team within the group, a ball is drawn from Pot a. Moving to Group B, another team is drawn from Pot 4. Once again, to determine the position of the team within the group, a ball is drawn from Pot b. The same procedure is repeated for Groups C and D (in consecutive order) until all balls from Pot 4 have been drawn and positioned in each group.

• The same procedure is followed for Pot 3.

• Finally, the same procedure is followed for Pot 2

Allocation of teams to pots 

Pot 1: Austria, Switzerland, Greece, The Netherlands

Pot 2: Croatia, Italy, Czech Republic, Sweden

Pot 3: Romania, Germany, Portugal, Spain

Pot 4: Poland, France, Turkey, Russia

For general information about UEFA EURO 2008™: Euro 2008 SA – Media Desk Tel.: +41 (0)22 707 2001 Email: media@euro2008.com