How the draw for World Cup finals will work

Facts about the draw for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany in Leipzig's Neue Messe exhibition centre:

¤ The ceremony begins at 8.30 p.m. (Mal-ta time) today and the draw itself, splitting the 32 qualified teams into 8 groups of four for the first phase of the finals, will take place from 9.20 to 9.50 p.m.

¤ The draw will be structured largely on geographical lines. The eight groups will contain a maximum of two European teams and no group will contain more than one team from any other confederation.

¤ That rule has complicated the pre-draw groupings. On Tuesday, the teams were split into three groups of eight, one special pot containing just Serbia & Montenegro and one group of seven.

¤ The groupings are as follows:

Pot 1 (seeds): Germany (hosts), Brazil (champions), England, Spain, Mexico, France, Argen-tina, Italy.

Pot 2 (Africa, South America and Oceania): Angola, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Tunisia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Australia.

Pot 3 (Europe): Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine.

Pot 4 (Asia, North, Central America and the Caribbean): Iran, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, United States, Trinidad & Tobago.

Special pot (lowest ranked European team): Serbia.

¤ To make sure there cannot be three European teams in one group, Serbia will be drawn in the same group as one of the non-European teams from Pot 1, i.e. Brazil, Argentina or Mexico.

¤ The seeds will automatically be placed in position 1 in their respective groups. However, after each team has been drawn from the other pots, a second draw will take place to decide the position of the team within the group.

¤ Germany, as hosts, will be placed in A1, while Brazil, as defending champions, will be F1. That guarantees the two teams will play their first round matches at the biggest venues.

¤ The top two finishers in each group will go through to the knock-out phase.

¤ Model Heidi Klum and TV presenter Reinhold Beckmann will host the event. FIFA director of communications Markus Siegler will run the draw itself.