Thursday 3rd December 2009

England's World Cup hopes will be boosted by yesterday's news that they will be seeded for tomorrow's draw.
This means when the group stages for next summer's tournament are drawn, they will avoid playing, among others, current holders Italy, reigning European champions Spain and the mighty Brazil.
However, despite being seeded, Fabio Capello's men could still face difficult competition in South Africa. Here's what I think is the worst case scenario for the draw:

England
Mexico
Ivory Coast
Portugal or France

England will want to avoid being drawn in the same group as either Portugal or France, who despite both scraping through qualification were impressive during the 2006 World Cup. They will hopefully also avoid Ivory Coast, who are perhaps the strongest African team in tomorrow's draw and have a number of quality players such as talented brothers Kolo and Yaya Toure, as well as Chelsea striker Didier Drogba. They would also prefer not to have to play Mexico in the group stages, as they have reached the second round of the last four World Cups.

England will want a draw that looks something like this instead:

England
New Zealand
Algeria
Slovakia

No disrespect to New Zealand, Algeria or Slovakia, but they are all relatively unknown on the World stage and every seeded team in the tournament will be hoping to have them in their group as the whipping boys, but who knows, one of these teams might turn out to be the surprise package.

Whoever England are grouped with in tomorrow's draw, the whole country will be expecting them to qualify for the latter stages of the World Cup. It is not until the knock out rounds that the competition really begins to get serious.

The draw for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be made tomorrow evening and coverage starts on BBC Two from 5:15pm.