Draw day

One hour to the FIFA draw (I was mistaken earlier; I thought it was at noon Eastern U.S. time - silly me. The broadcast starts at noon; naturally, we have 45 minutes of wank time for the teevee commentators to bloviate, the obligatory South Africa tourism puff pieces, the doubly obligatory Nelson Mandela interviews ... -Ed.). Here are the “pots” from which groupings will be drawn:

Pot 1 (which consists of the host nation and the top seven teams)
Argentina
Brazil
England
Germany
Italy
The DutchNetherHolland
Spain
South Africa

Pot 2 (Asia, CONCACAF and Oceania)
Australia
Honduras
Japan
Korea, Bad
Korea, Good
Mexico
New Zealand
MUTHAFUCKIN U.S.A.!

Pot 3 (Africa and South America)
Algeria
Camerooooooooon
Chile
Côte d’Ivoire
Ghana
Nigeria
Paraguay
Uruguay

Pot 4 (Europe)
Denmark, Something’s Rotten In
France’s hands
Greece
Portugal
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Switzerland, even the bigots

These pots were based solely on the October 2009 FIFA World Rankings. (N.B. USA is at #11, seven spots ahead of Mexico. So you’d think we’d get a better seed with that and the fact that we won our group; alas, we will be screwed by FIFA again.)

Fun facts about the draw: Brazil and Argentina may not be drawn with any remaining South African nations (Pot 3), and South Africa may not be drawn with any other African nation (Pot 3).

Here’s the fine print on the draw procedure, if you want a crash course in the next 65 minutes.