Saturday December 7th 5 am: World Cup draw live on both Sky Sport 2 and ESPN
Latest on the revolutionary new draw procedure which has even the FIFA Secretary General confused:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/sport/football/9474082/Bafflingly-complex-football-World-Cup-draw
"In such a vast country, there was an early plan to revert to the arrangements once used in World Cups where teams were based in one region instead of travelling all over the country but Brazilian organisers did not want one region to stage all of Brazil's first round games.
As that was not politically expedient, FIFA agreed every team had to travel all over, resulting in the huge distances covered, apart from those in Group H where the venues are relatively close.
The team drawn in position E3 has the unenviable task of playing in the wintry cool of Porto Alegre then the tropical heat of Salvador in its first two group matches....
Each group will consist of one team from each of four pots with Pot 1 featuring the top seeds: Brazil, the host nation, alongside Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland.
The other pots will be based on geographical criteria so that countries from the same confederations are kept apart.
Pot 2 will contain the five African teams, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria and Cameroon, plus the non-seeded South American teams Chile and Ecuador and a European team to be moved out of Pot 4 in a pre-draw.
Pot 3 will feature Japan, Iran, South Korea, Australia, United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras while nine European sides, Bosnia, Croatia, England, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and France, will comprise Pot 4.
Valcke revealed that a pre-draw will be held to move one of the nine European teams into Pot 2 where they would then be drawn against one of the four seeded South American teams to preserve the geographical balance of the draw.
To complicate matters further, the four South American seeds would form a temporary Pot X and the three not drawn against the European team in Pot 2 will return to the main draw...."