The World Cup draw is scheduled to be announced on Friday, December 6 and the event will be streaming online from the WatchESPN website on ESPN.com and it is being held at the Costa do Sauipe Resort in Bahia starting up around 11:00 pm ET and the announcement is very anticipated for the host nation in Brazil, as it is the first major event before the tournament begins next summer.
The actual World Cup tournament starts on June 12 and will go until July 13 and the 32 teams that qualified for the event will be split into groups of four teams into eight groups. The pool was placed into four pots that will be drawn into the World Cup bracket and the first pot includes the host nation of Brazil along with the top ranked FIFA teams in Argentina, Colombia, Belgium, Uruguay, Switzerland, Spain, and Germany. Those teams will be picked first and then followed by pot 2, with Brazil already getting placed into Group A to start things off as the host nation and then the rest of the teams will be split into Group B through Group H.
The second pot will be drawn next and has the South American teams that are unseeded and the African qualifiers, while Pot 3 has the CONCACAF teams, including the United States and Mexico along with the teams coming from Asia. That leaves Pot 4 to have the unseeded European teams and one of those will be moved to even things out when the draw is done on Friday. The groupings are very important for teams looking to win the World Cup, as the draw could be deadly for some nations if they get picked into a tough group and some teams also are looking at some brutal travel schedules. There has been plenty of controversy about what has been going on with the stadiums and there also issues related to travel, as some of the venues are very far apart and teams could get the unlucky route of having to travel over 7,000 miles for their schedule.
The 32 teams that qualified are hoping for good results on Friday and each nation will have a special representative to help select the balls and there are some groups that will be better than others, as the Group D teams will have to deal with heavy travelling and one of the tough ones is the Brazil matchup, which also has plenty of travelling. Brazil won the Confederations Cup and they are looking to have a very good performance at the tournament as the host nation and the team has high expectations for the event.
The draw will be read live from Brazil on Friday and the reading will air on ESPN from the WatchESPN website starting up at 11:30 am ET.
