Qualifying for the 2018 World Cup

yeah fair enough, still a flawed way of ranking though

 

If Peru beat New Zealand tonight, guess who will be the lowest-ranked team (in the current Fifa rankings) of the 32 finalists.

(Clue: it messes up the seedings a bit.)

 

Russia?

 

Assuming Peru beat NZ to claim the final spot tonight...

Pot 1 Russia, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Poland, France
Pot 2 Spain, Peru, Switzerland, England, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Croatia.
Pot 3 Denmark, Iceland, Costa Rica, Sweden, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Iran.
Pot 4 Serbia, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Panama, South Korea, Saudi Arabia.
(If NZ win, they go into pot 4 and Serbia and Denmark each move up a pot.)

Group of death for England? How about Brazil, Costa Rica/Denmark and Serbia?
Group of life: Russia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia.

As I mentioned before, assuming Peru make it, we're twice as likely to draw Brazil or Argentina (20% chance each) as the other seeds (10% each). This is because Peru, Colombia and Uruguay can't be drawn with S American opponents, so it's 2 from the other 5 for Brazil and Argentina.

 

whatever Group we're in will be the Group of the early bath

 

When is the draw?

At least we'll avoid getting a tanking from Spain.
Out of pot 1 I'd take on Poland. Pot 3 Iran. Pot 4 Panama.. Or the group of PIPE....We might just have enough to make the last 16

 

Not sure how good they are at the minute, but Costa Rica would still be bad dreams.

Last time, after we went out after two games/two defeats, our final, meaningless, match was against them which we drew 0-0.

Hodgson said he was pleased as we'd 'avoided a banana skin'.

 

Fortnight on Friday I think.

I quite like the look of this new International League - could be miles better than the friendlies and we get to play decent opposition as well.

Might be a good testing ground for this new talent coming through too.

 

I'm sure the FA have someone working full-time on the excuses.

 

JOTD
Englishman walks into a bar.
Normally there would be a scotsman a welshman and an irishman too.
But this bar is in Russia during 2018 world cup.

 

So he gets the **** kicked out of him by Russian ultras.

 

I do love a good punchline.

 

Peru became the final side to qualify for the World Cup with a 2-0 play-off victory over New Zealand.