England, Wales get top billing
Print Edition
ENGLAND and Wales will take their place among the top nine European seeds for today’s World Cup qualifying draw in St Petersburg.
The top seeds are based on the FIFA world rankings from June meaning previous World Cup winners Italy and France are only second seeds. World champion Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Spain and Croatia are the other top seeds.
Along with host Russia, 13 other European nations will qualify for the World Cup with the nine group winners from today’s draw being joined by the winners of four playoffs between the eight best second-placed teams.
Scotland and Northern Ireland will be in the third of the six pots, while the Republic of Ireland is in pot four.
Group qualifying will take place between September 2016 and October 2017 with the playoffs in November.
Meanwhile, Zenit St Petersburg’s Brazilian striker Hulk has pulled out of today’s draw, only days after complaining of “gross and ugly” racism in Russian football.
Club commitments
The Brazilian international will be replaced by former Russia captain Alexey Smertin as one of the draw assistants, FIFA said in a statement, adding that Hulk had withdrawn due to club commitments.
Zenit is away to FC Ural tomorrow in a Russian Premier League match, although there have been no alterations to the fixture list since FIFA initially announced on Wednesday that Hulk would take part in the draw.
The World Cup’s local organizing committee said the decision was made purely on sporting grounds by Zenit coach Andre Villas-Boas.
Other former players who will take part in the draw include Ronaldo (Brazil), Diego Forlan (Uruguay), Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Samuel Eto’o (Cameroon) and Oliver Bierhoff (Germany).
Russia has repeatedly been criticized for failure to tackle racism in domestic soccer.
Hulk had said he was honored after being named as a draw participant on Wednesday. However, on Monday, he had complained bitterly about racism in Russian football.
“It (racism) happens at almost every match in Russia but the world does not hear about it because they try to keep it quiet,” Hulk said.
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