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Football world cup 2006 – France is seeded in top 8

Wednesday, 07 December 2005

Football world cup 2006 - France is seeded in top 8

FIFA have announced the top 8 seeded countries tonight Tuesday 6th December along with Brazil, England, hosts Germany, Spain, Mexico, Argentina and Italy. The remaining 24 teams have been divided according to their regions rather than current rankings or past world cup performances. This means that the team currently ranked second in the world, the Czech Republic, are not in the top seeds nor the Netherlands ranked third. "The seedings were based on FIFA rankings for the last three years and the last two World Cup finals" said Jim Brown, FIFA's Director of Competitions.

Germany will be seeded in slot A1 in the draw and Brazil in F1, to ensure that these two teams who can expect large crowds will be sure of the larger stadiums. Germany will open the World Cup in Munich on June 9 while Brazil will begin their campaign for a sixth title in Berlin on June 13.

In a bid to counter the complaints of some players lethargy in the last world cup FIFA have ruled that any player selected to play in the finals will not be allowed to play in any other competitive match after the 15th of May, the deadline for the announcement of the finalists' 23-man squads, apart from those players involved in the Champions League final which will now be held in Paris on May 17 rather than May 24.

The winners of the 2006 World Cup will earn 24.50 million Swiss francs (almost 16 million Euros) in prize money, with the runners-up receiving 22.5m Swiss francs.

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