All 12 stadiums in the 11 host cities will host four group games with only Kaliningrad, Volgograd and Ekaterinburg missing out on the knockout stages.
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England have not failed to qualify for a World Cup since 1994, though they did miss out on the European Championships in 2008. ― Reuters picST PETERSBURG, July 25 ― The starting gun for the 2018 World Cup in Russian Federation will be fired today as 141 national sides await their fate in the qualifying draw in Saint Petersburg. The winners of these pairs in the second round will encounter Cameroon, Tunisia, Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Niger, Mali, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Cape Verde and Algeria, all nations which won the the second round.
“We are here to launch a football marathon”, Putin said through a translator, nearly three years ahead of the finals tournament kicking off after around 850 qualifying matches.
“We see what is happening around football”, Putin told Blatter. All six teams will play each other home and away, and the top three teams will qualify automatically for the World Cup.
It was Blatter’s first major public event since American and Swiss criminal investigations of corruption in world football were unsealed two months ago.
All attention after was on the draw. “Our support is especially important during the current geopolitical situation”, Blatter said.
The draw was hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.
In response, Putin said to Blatter: “As promised, we will do all we can for sportsmen and fans alike to feel at home here”.
Platini says clubs “want to spend more money… but they want to spend more money they don’t have, that is not so good”.
Over 200 states have signed up for the preliminary draw which was carried out at the historic Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna.
In the other playoff tie, the team which finishes fourth in the CONCACAF competition will face the fifth-placed team from Asia.
In other third-round CONCACAF matchups, which covers North, Central and South America, it’s Curacao vs. El Salavador, Grenada vs. Haiti, St. Vincent and the Grenadines vs. Aruba, Jamaica vs. Nicaragua and Antigua and Barbuda vs. Guatemala.
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Because South America competes as a one 10-nation group, the draw determines merely the schedule.
