Daves On Soccer

The long awaited and much anticipated seedings for Germany 2006 have just been released by FIFA. The U.S. wound up in 9th position, missing a top seeding by a single point. FIFA have also announced that the other "pots" of teams will be based on geography, and not ranking.

Full details on the criteria used for determining seedings can be had here, but, in short, FIFA calculated a score based on two factors: a country's position in the FIFA World Rankings over the past three years, and their final placement at the past two World Cups. In the case of the U.S., their last place finish in France '98 cost them a spot at being a top-seeded team in Germany '06.

Here's how the "pots" shake out...

Pot A: Brazil, England, Spain, Germany, Mexico, France, Argentina, Italy

Pot B: Australia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Angola, Togo, Ecuador, Paraguay

Pot C: Croatia, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine

Pot D: Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago, United States

Pot E: Serbia & Montenegro