Smells like pieces | Montreal Magazine

The draw for the World Cup groups will be held on Friday afternoon. Then Canada will know its opponents.

This will be the culmination of a lengthy qualification process for 32 countries that will see their names put in one of the four hats.

Before explaining how the lottery is performed, it must be remembered that each union has pre-assigned places. So Asia has three or four centers, Africa has five, CONCACAF has three or four, South America has four or five, Oceania has zero or one, Europe has 13 and the last place goes to the host country, Qatar.

The variable number of places is explained by the fact that a team from each of the four confederations involved will participate in one of the Intercontinental Semi-Finals which awards the last two available places.

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hats

Let us now explain how this lottery works, which is eagerly awaited, but there are also concerns because the group in which a team finds itself can sometimes determine its fate even before the competition begins.

Thus, there are four hats in which the names of eight countries are placed, except for the first hat since Qatar, as the host country, is automatically placed in group A.

The ranking in the FIFA rankings determines which country a country finds itself in. For example, Belgium, Brazil, France, Argentina, England, Spain and Portugal will make up the first place.

We will proceed in this way until the fourth pot where we will find, among others, Canada, the winners of the semi-finals between the confederations and the last winners of Europe (UEFA).

Normally all European representatives should be known, but the war in Ukraine changed that and postponed the match they were due to play in Scotland. Wales will face the winner of this game. We’ll have to wait until mid-June for these meetings.

Grammar

We are not just going to unload the hats one by one because there are certain rules.

Thus, two teams from the same union cannot be in the same group. So Canada will not find itself opposed to the United States or Mexico, for example.

But there is an exception for Europe because UEFA has 13 positions and there are only eight groups.

But there can only be two European picks in the same group. In general we find the famous death group among those who contain it. Because there is always one.

clouds

Now let’s get to the lottery. As we have said, there are four hats with eight balls bearing the name of a country or the owner of a place determined by a knockout match.

There are eight other hats representing groups A to H where there are four balls numbered from 1 to 4. As mentioned, Qatar is placed at center A1, which is a privilege granted to the host country.

We will empty the first hat by attaching a ball to each of the other seven groups.

We will then begin to empty the second hat by continuing to rotate the groups, until we empty the fourth hat.

In this way, we will know the identity of each of the eight groups in the World Cup, which will start in Doha, Qatar, on November 21.