World Cup Qualifying Draw – Who You Want – UEFA

With the World Cup Qualifying draw just a few days away, we wanted to take a look at the World Cup Qualifying pots and who teams should be hoping to be paired with. The basis for these projections of course are our original We Global Football rankings.

As a background, Russia has already qualified for the final tournament as hosts. The other 52 eligible teams in UEFA will be broken into 7 groups of 6 and 2 groups of 5. UEFA has also requested from FIFA that Germany, Netherlands, England, Spain, Italy and France be placed into groups with 6 teams. Surely this is for revenue purposes.

The pots are as follows:

 

 

Pot 1

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It’s important to keep things in context in terms of rankings. While a team may be higher or lower in the rankings, the Predictor value is what you really want to keep your eye on. We rank Wales 3rd highest in this group, but their predictor value is virtually even with Romania and the Netherlands, and not much above the other 4 teams in this pot. Germany and Belgium appear to be the two best, and these are the two teams you really want to avoid.

Just a quick note about our rankings: we don’t count friendlies any different than other competitions, so because Romania and Wales haven’t played friendlies and been boosted in the FIFA Rankings, that’s not the case here. All we care about is who did you beat, where was the game, and how badly did you beat them. In our opinion, those teams are deserving of those rankings. You can read more here.

We actually rank England lowest in this pot, which is quite humorous. They’re probably a little underrated, as are Portugal.

For my money, here’s the team you want to draw:

Spain has been in a free fall for awhile, and since we only keep 18 months of matches, they’re really starting to feel the effects of recent poor performance. They’re vulnerable for sure.

 

Pot 2

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France to us is clearly the best team in Pot 2. We have them almost a full goal ahead of anyone else, and if you’re in Pot 1, that’s who you want to avoid. Unfortunately for Germany, England, Netherlands and Spain, the odds of drawing France went up from 1/9 to 1/7 by the UEFA mandate. That’s good news for the other teams in Pot 1. After France, we rank Austria, Iceland, and Switzerland highest. Austria has been on a tear, and is destroying a EURO qualifying group with Sweden and Russia. Iceland, likewise has had to contend with other strong teams in EURO qualifying and is doing extremely well.

We never seem to be as high on Italy as others, and that’s fine. In our opinion, they’re definitely beatable. But you have to be looking at either Bosnia-Herzegovina or Slovakia as the team you’re hoping to get from Pot 2.

 

Nothing against Bosnia, who is a solid team, but in comparison to the others in this group, you’ve got to like your odds better if you pull them. Conversely, Bosnia even being in Pot 2 ensures that their qualifying group is easier than expected.

 

Pot 3

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Pots 3 and 4 are really where the quality of the group is going to be determined. There’s a pretty big gap between the best team here and the worst team. This is largely due to just piss poor scheduling by Poland and a failure by Scotland to beat Ireland and seize a Pot 2 spot. Poland and Scotland look very dangerous to us, and at this point look much better than the other teams in this group. We have Poland a full goal better than all but Scotland, Albania, and Sweden.

At the bottom, Greece should feel extremely lucky to be in Pot 3, but they’re currently a disaster, while Albania and Northern Ireland are going in complete opposite directions. Who would you want to play?

 

Greece is a full goal worse in our rankings than the 2nd worst team, Ukraine. They’re 2.5-3 goals worse than Scotland and Poland. If the Faroe Islands can take out Greece twice, what would Poland or Scotland do to them? If you’re in Pot 1 or 2 and draw one of the bottom teams here, your odds of going to the World Cup go way, way up.

 

Pot 4

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There’s not a ton of variance in Pot 4, but Republic of Ireland and especially Turkey appear to be head and shoulders above the rest of the lot. Turkey is a good team, and they really just had the unfortunate luck of being in a very, very difficult EURO qualifying group. We rank Netherlands, Iceland, Czech Republic and Turkey all in our top 32. Ireland is in the exact same boat, as being drawn with Germany, Poland and Scotland made things very, very difficult for them. Those are the clear two you want to avoid. They’re what we like to call “Pot 4 haymakers”. If Turkey was in Pot 3 and Greece was in Pot 4, things would be far, far more even.

We don’t think the Faroe Islands are anywhere near the pushover they used to be. #62 in the WGF rankings ain’t half bad. Estonia and Slovenia certainly look like the two weakest of this lot. We’re way off of the FIFA rankings when it comes to Slovenia. Since the start of 2014, they have 3 wins and 8 losses. To us, that’s not a top 50 team in the world, especially when two of those wins are over San Marino and Lithuania. Perhaps we’re a little low on them, but they certainly don’t appear to be any more dangerous than the rest. Overall, this is a fair pot, and we’d expect some of these teams to make a serious push for the World Cup playoffs.

Another interesting thing to note is that if we were setting up pots based on the WGF Rankings, only Estonia and Slovenia would fall to Pot 5, with Cyprus and Finland moving up. Overall, the FIFA Rankings seem to have a done a decent job around the middle.

 

Pot 5

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As we mentioned, we like Finland and Cyprus a decent amount, but Belarus and Latvia aren’t half bad either. We have a pretty substantial dropoff between #4 Latvia and #5 Moldova of about 0.8 goals. We view Moldova, Lithuania, Armenia, FYR Macedonia and Azerbaijan as the teams you’re hoping to draw out of this lot. They’re unlikely to cause much distress, but teams in Pot 5 usually don’t take significant beatings.

It would be a major surprise to us to see any of these teams make a huge splash in qualifying. We don’t think there’s an Iceland scenario like in 2014 qualifying. If you see one of these teams in the Playoffs, it would probably be the biggest surprise of the tournament. And if you do, we’d expect it to be one of Cyprus, Latvia, Finland or Belarus.

 

Pot 6

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As is frequently the case, teams in Pot 6 appear to mostly be harmless. We rank Georgia and Kazakhstan a fair amount higher than the rest. Malta, San Marino and Andorra have virtually no shot, but there is a decent amount of significance here. With the 3 bottom teams highly likely to finish last, those matches should get thrown out for the playoffs. None of the big teams are going to take less than 6 points against those teams. But if Kazakhstan or Georgia can sneak out a point, it could really harm a team hoping to make the playoffs. Remember, the worst 2nd place team does not advance to the playoffs, so those are much tougher games than necessary.

 

Awards

We’re going to give out some fake potential awards.

Most Difficult Group
Germany
France
Poland
Turkey
Finland
Georgia

Easiest Group
England
Slovakia
Greece
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Andorra

Most Traveling Group
Spain
Scotland
Sweden
Turkey
Cyprus
San Marino

 

And if we wanted to pick groups that would be the most even, here’s how we would do things:

 

Thanks for reading as always. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @We_Global as we keep you up to date with the latest happenings and projections in international football.