This Friday, starting at 6:00 p.m. from the Doha Congress and Exhibition Center in Qatar, the draw for the World Cup group stage will be held with a very simple dynamic: The countries are divided into four pots to form the eight groups of four teams. From each drum, a team will come out for each group. In this way, Spain, in Pot 1, avoids Belgium, Brazil, France, Argentina, England and Portugal.
It will not be the only condition: in the groups, there cannot be more than two Europeans or more than one country from the rest of the confederations. For example, there cannot be a Spain-Denmark-Poland nor a Brazil-Uruguay. There are three places still to be decided, corresponding to the last European playoff, that of Asia vs. CONMEBOL (Peru against Australia or United Arab Emirates) and Oceania against CONCACAF (New Zealand against Costa Rica).
Once the draw mechanism is known, AS offers you a simulator that works as follows. Qatar goes straight to Group A. Then, seven balls appear at the bottom, corresponding to the remaining seven teams. By clicking on each of them, they fit into a group. After completing these initial balls, another eight appear, corresponding to the selections in pot 2. The procedure is repeated: you ‘click’ on one and it is randomly paired in one of the groups. So on until the final conformation. It should be noted that the system takes into account the restrictions when facing teams randomly.
On the other hand, there is the possibility, at the top of the image, to start the draw again or the ‘fast draw’, with which it is not necessary to ‘click’ on each ball, but directly the eight complete groups come out. Once the draw is over, it gives you the chance to download the result in different formats.