Everything you need to know about the FIFA Women's World Cup draw - are England seeded? Who could the Lionesses face?
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Published 21/10/2022 at 22:54 GMT
Saturday morning sees the draw for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. There will be 32 teams competing at the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand next year but there are three spots still up for grabs in the form of play-off winners. Who will England draw? And how does it work? Find out all you need to know about the draw that takes place in Auckland.
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The draw for the FIFA Women’s World Cup takes place on Saturday morning, with England set to learn their group stages opponents when the draw is conducted in Auckland.
Sarina Wiegman’s side will travel to the other side of the planet next summer, with the finals held in Australia and New Zealand between July 20 and August 20.
This World Cup is the first to feature 32 teams, after 24 teams competed at the 2019 finals in France. Interestingly, three of the places in next year’s tournament are still to be confirmed, with 10 teams set to take part in a final inter-continental qualifying competition next February.
The process to secure a place in that pre-qualification tournament was incredibly complicated, but the bottom line is that England will be the sole Home Nations representative in next year’s finals.
Wales and Scotland narrowly missed out, the latter losing out in a 1-0 defeat to the Republic of Ireland who claimed their place at a Women’s World Cup for the first time.
Who is in it?
- Pot 1 (seeded teams): New Zealand, Australia, United States, Sweden, Germany, England, France, Spain.
- Pot 2: Canada, Netherlands, Brazil, Japan, Norway, Italy, China, South Korea.
- Pot 3: Denmark, Switzerland, Republic of Ireland, Colombia, Argentina, Vietnam, Costa Rica, Jamaica.
- Pot 4: Nigeria, Philippines, South Africa, Morocco, Zambia, three play-off tournament winners.
What is the draw process?
Eight teams will be allocated into the each of the four pots, which includes the 29 qualifiers and the three play-off tournament placeholders.
Teams’ positions into the pots are determined by their current FIFA rankings. As one of the current top six sides, England are in pot 1, along with co-hosts Australia and New Zealand.
Aside from the four team pots, a further eight group pots (labelled A to H) will have four balls each to determine the respective group position numbers.
New Zealand have already been allocated A1, while Australia have taken up position B1. As a result, the remaining six pot 1 nations will be drawn into position 1 in each of the remaining groups.
The draw will then continue with the teams ranked in pots 2, 3 and 4 respectively. After each team is drawn out, a second ball will decide their group.
As in the men’s World Cup, teams from the same continent cannot be placed in the same group. An exception applies to European nations, with a maximum of two permitted.
But as the BBC reports, the rule could go out of the window given that the winner of the inter-continental play-offs are yet to be revealed. This means that two countries from the same continent could be named in the same group.
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