While FIFA’s organizing committee stills is trying to get the recent scandals behind them, earlier this week the FIFA Organizing Committee unveiled the match schedules for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2017 Confederation Cup that would be held in Russia. As Russia is the host the team has been named as A1 seed for both this competition and the rest of the schedule have been announced.
Please also note that the intercontinental playoff ties are set, which will decide the final World Cup spots: CONCACAF will play Asia CONMEBOL will play Oceania.
FIFA World Cup 2018 Qualifying draw looks like this:
Africa First Round -
Then each individual winners would take on the following teams for the second round:
Once the 20 matches of the first two round are over, the 20 winners will go into four groups of five and winners of each group will proceed to go to Russia for World Cup 2018 Finals.
The group draws for the North, Central American and Caribbean Zone that is CONCACAF looks like this:
Group A: Mexico, Honduras, Curaçao or El Salvador, Canada or Belize
Group B: Costa Rica, Panama, Grenada or Haiti, Jamaica or Nicaragua
Group C: USA, Trinidad & Tobago, Saint Vincent & the Grenadines or Aruba, Antigua & Barbuda or Guatemala
The teams that will finish in the top two on these groups will then go onto a six-team round called the Robin League where the teams that finish in top three positions would qualify for the World Cup Finals while the team that finishes fourth will have to go into intercontinental play-offs in order to qualify further.
The Group Draws for Oceania -
The winners of these two groups would the qualify for the intercontinental play-off where they will have to take on the fifth-ranked CONMEBOL team.
CONMEBOL
The draw for the South American section remains simple, there are ten teams in this group with each team set to play each other in a home and away league matches. Top four teams in this would then go through to the World Cup 2018 Finals while the fifth placed team would go into the intercontinental play-off against Oceania in order to qualify further.
Finally, we move on to Europe (UEFA), the draws for the European teams are as follows:
Group A: Netherlands, France, Sweden, Bulgaria, Belarus, Luxembourg
Group B: Portugal, Switzerland, Hungary, Faroe Islands, Latvia, Andorra
Group C: Germany, Czech Republic, Northern Ireland, Norway, Azerbaijan, San Marino
Group D: Wales, Austria, Serbia, Republic of Ireland, Moldova, Georgia
Group E: Romania, Denmark, Poland, Montenegro, Armenia, Kazakhstan
Group F: England, Slovakia, Scotland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Malta
Group G: Spain, Italy, Albania, Israel, Macedonia, Liechtenstein
Group H: Belgium, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Greece, Estonia, Cyprus
Group I: Croatia, Iceland, Ukraine, Turkey, Finland
The winners of each group in the above will then proceed to World Cup 2018 Finals that would be held in Russia. Looking at the above groups while England and Germany both seems to have drawn an easy group, Group A, and G would be a nightmare for many teams and would be the one to watch out for and would keep rest of the European teams on their toes.
Please also note that the Asian section of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifying Draw was not draft on Saturday night as the qualifying in Asia is already underway.
