U.S. Team Placed in Fourth Group
The list of possible opponents the U.S. team will face in next year’s World Cup was reduced by seven Wednesday when FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, announced the seedings for the May 31-June 30 tournament in Japan and South Korea.
The 32 nations taking part in the world championship were divided into four uneven groups, the first consisting of the eight seeded teams and the other three drawn along geographic lines.
The U.S. was placed in the fourth group, along with the five African nations and the two other North and Central American and Caribbean countries.
Since teams will not play those from the same group in the first round, the U.S. knows it will not play Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Costa Rica or Mexico.
Just who the U.S. will play will be learned Saturday, when the World Cup final draw will be held in Pusan, South Korea.
One opponent will come from among the eight seeded teams. They are defending champion France, the host nations of Japan and South Korea, former champions Brazil, Argentina, Italy and Germany, and Spain, which edged Mexico and England to become the eighth seeded team.
The seeding was based on a formula that took into account each nation’s FIFA rankings over the last three years and its record in the last three World Cups. The defending champion and host nations are always seeded, regardless of standing.
The U.S. also will play one of the teams from the second group, which consists of European teams Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden and Turkey.
The Americans’ third opponent will come from the third group, made up of teams from South America and Asia: Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, China and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. also could find itself playing a second European opponent because the three European teams not drawn out of the 11-team second group will be added to the five-nation third group.
The only concession FIFA made Wednesday was in unanimously agreeing to allow China to play its first-round games in South Korea. That will help Chinese fans travel to the World Cup and permit the South Korean World Cup Organizing Committee to sell the remaining 300,000 tickets.
The decision was made under a FIFA regulation that allows a country to be placed in a “special region for economic and geographic reasons.” The regulation has not been employed before.
Because teams from the same geographic region are kept apart as much as possible in the first round, China cannot be placed in the same group as South Korea when the draw is held Saturday.
In other decisions made by FIFA’s World Cup Organizing Committee on Wednesday, yellow cards (cautions) earned in qualifying play will be erased when the World Cup starts, but players suspended because of red cards (expulsions) will have to serve that suspension in the World Cup.
Also, all 32 teams will receive 1 million Swiss francs ($600,000) from FIFA to help with their World Cup preparations.
