France Sweden Spain Czech Republic Germany Republic of Ireland Romania Italy Belgium Turkey

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

Answers

England not even in the top 10 - we are in the second group of seeds.

Some strange ones there, anyone would think that UEFA didn't like England...

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

England are 17th, behind all the above teams plus Russia, Croatia, Denmark, Holland, Yugoslavia and Poland

We seriously can't be 17th best in Europe?

Quite worryingly, in 18th place gnawing at our heels is Slovenia, those giants of World football.

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

I'm sure I saw that England had moved up the World rankings to about no. 10.... but then agian UEFA are bigger than the world aren't they!

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

Of course they follow some sort of rules, they dont pick the teams they like. How the rules work? I dont have a f**king clue =)

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

I think it's based on last Euro champs and maybe World Cup...

-- Anonymous, November 23, 2001

The seedings are decided by arriving at a coefficient based on the qualifying competitions (play-offs not counted) for the 2002 World Cup and Euro2000. They divide the total points earned in those competitions by the games played.

England's coefficient for the 2002 qualifiers was 2.125, which would have been sufficient on it's own to guarantee a seeding (joint 8th). Unfortunately our poor performance in the Euro2000 qualifiers (we picked up fewer points than any of the other 15 sides who qualified) has let us down so we drop to 17th. It's a reasonably fair system, though some countries always seem to end up with 2 really useless sides in their group like Andorra, Faroe Islands, Sam Marino etc, whereas England always seem to have to play a full set of competitive games without the luxury of being able to boost our coefficient with 4 easy wins. (Albania were the worst side in our group this time around and they're streets ahead of the bottom orders, as are Finland). Just luck of the draw, so can't really complain.

For the stattos among you (although I'm sure Softie already knew all this!) the full list of coefficients canbe found at www.uefa.org

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

Does this perhaps suggest to UEFA that their clever "coefficients" could just be a load of bollox?

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

Well it's not perfect, but at least it's based on something more concrete than, say, those dodgy world rankings they produce. And it means that if you win enough games you will be seeded. England are basically paying the price for some dreadful results in the 2 qualifying campaigns - defeats by Germany and Sweden, draws with Sweden, Finland, Greece, Poland - which isn't unreasonable. Let's face it, for all that we got a great result against Germany, we've limped through both qualifying campaigns, so why should we be seeded?

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

True Andy, but Czech Republic did not qualify for the WC did they?

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

Neither did Holland, who are also above us.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

...... nor Roumania!

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

No thats true, but at the same time Holland had a much tougher World Cup group than us. Any system will produce anomalies but by considering results over 2 qualifying competitions you're at least looking at a bigger sample of mactches. Anyway, it's not like England missed out by just 1 place - looking at our qualifying results over 2 campaigns there were 16 (!) teams with a better record than us. We can hardly complain at not being seeded.

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001

While we're on the subject, FIFA will presumably be announcing their seedings for the World Cup very soon as the draw is scheduled for early December. According to their website "The Organising Committee for the FIFA World Cup shall divide the teams into groups by seeding and drawing lots in public, whilst taking sports, geographic and economic factors into consideration, as far as possible".

This basically gives them carte blanche to have whatever seedings they like, but I think the odds are against us being 1st seeds. Traditionally the hosts have always been first seeds, as are the holders so that takes out 3 of the 8 spaces straight away. Brazil and Argentina will certainly be seeded both on the "sporting" and "geographic" criteria, and the remaining 3 spots will go to European sides.

We MIGHT squeeze in - on the plus side, the failure of Romania and Holland to qualify is excellent news as they would both have almost certainly been seeded higher than us. On the negative side, if they use the same sporting criteria as Uefa then we've got no chance since UEFA's coefficient ranks us 17th.

My guess is that we'll be in the second tier of seeds which will be split into 2 groups of 8, the European teams being 1 group and the pick of the unseeded South American and African teams in the other. That way they can ensure that each group has 1 European side and no more than 1 SOuth American and no more than 1 African/Asian side as they did in 1998. If we're lucky we could get Korea, Ecuador and Senegal. More likely we'll get France, Nigeria and and Ireland.....

-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001