KEEP YOUR DRAWS ON

The World Cup draw for 2018 took place today at the Presidential Konstantinovsky Palace in St Petersburg, once the Swedish chancellor's estate, but commandeered by President Putin.

141 teams were entered into the draw and also Russia who qualify as hosts. There are 52 European places spread into 7 groups of 6 and 2 groups of 5, making 9 groups altogether. England along with the top nations will be in groups of 6, for broadcasting reasons. There is no Zimbabwe because they have not paid their fees and Gibraltar is not a member of FIFA so cannot be included although the Gibraltans are contesting this.

Nine top seeds head each group and two of these are England and Wales. The 9 winners from the groups will continue to the Finals and the 8 best runners up will play qualifying matches to complete the tally.

England appeared in pot 1 along with Wales (Bales??), so could have drawn Iceland, Albania, Faroe Islands, Moldova and Andorra. But actually the draw was quite encouraging setting us against Slovakia, Scotland, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta. 53 teams come from Africa, 18 from ConCaf Central and North America), 10 from South America and 8 from Oceania.

The first matches begin in September 2016.

In 1930, the first World Cup held in Uruguay. The reason for this honour was that Uruguay was celebrating the centenary of their constitution and they had won the 1928 Olympics final. There was no need for a country to qualify, as only 13 nations opted to join in the new cup tournament. England were far too important in the World of football to travel all that way to play against ”minor opposition”, though to be fair, the journey did prevent a lot of the Europeans from joining in.

Belgium did, but they had to because their main FA man was vice-president of FIFA. France had to make the journey because Jules Rimet (trophy is named after his inspiration) was French! The Romanians were there after being encouraged by their King and Yugoslavia was represented by Serbians who were adopted by the Uruguayans as “iches or ichachos” because all their names ended in -ic or similar!!

Of the 13 teams, 7 came from South America, 4 from Europe, 2 from North America and the four groups produced four semi-finalists, with Uruguay winning outright beating Argentina 4-2, a repeat of the 1928 Olympics Games final.

There was a dispute about the use of the football for the final. Such was the indecision that a different ball, from Argentina was used in the first half and one from Uruguay in the second! See below.

Various death threats had been made to players of note and the referee, a Belgian, actually had asked for a boat to be ready in the port of Montevideo for a quick get away, should he need one!