Ahead of the UEFA preliminary draw for World Cup 2022, which is taking place virtually on December 7 at 6:00pm CET, UEFA have confirmed their seeded teams following the publication of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, which lists Belgium as top-seeds in Pot 1.
France, England, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands all join the Red Devils in Pot 1 with the remaining 45 UEFA member associations allocated as follows:
Pot 2: Switzerland, Wales, Poland, Sweden, Austria, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Slovakia and Romania
Pot 3: Russia, Hungary, Republic of Ireland, Czech Republic, Norway, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Scotland, Greece and Finland
Pot 4: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Israel, Belarus, Georgia and Luxembourg
Pot 5: Armenia, Cyprus, Faroe Islands, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia and Andorra
Pot 6: Malta, Moldova, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar and San Marino
The teams will be allocated to a group in alphabetical order, from Group A to Group J (the first team drawn will be allocated to Group A, the second team to Group B…).
Pot 6 contains just five teams, so these teams will be drawn into the sixth position in groups F to J.
Each team will play the others in their group twice, in a home-and-away format between March and November 2021, and the 10 group winners will qualify directly for the tournament.
The 10 runners-up will contest the play-offs, and they’ll be joined by the two best group winners from the UEFA Nations League that didn’tt qualify directly or didn’t enter the play-offs as runners-up.
These 12 teams will be split into three play-offs, which will be single-leg knockout games in March 2022 to determine the last three European nations to book a place to Qatar.