FIFA World Cup 2018 Russia - Group Draw

The live draw for the FIFA World Cup 2018 held at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, started at 2100 hrs IST. and was completed in under 20 minutes. Not that it was expected to be a long drawn out process. Former England forward Gary Linekar, the Golden Boot winner at Mexico 1986, conducted the draw along with Maria Komandnaya, a Russian sports journalist. Eight former greats of the game were on-stage to assist with selecting the teams from the 4 pots and then selecting teh positions in each group. They were Laurent Blanc (France), Gordon Banks (England), Cafu (Brazil), Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Diego Forlan (Uruguay), Diego Maradona (Argentina), Carlos Puyol (Spain) and Nikita Simonyan (Russia).

The teams were seeded into 4 pots with Russia and the top 7 ranked teams forming pot 1 and following the FIFA-CocaCola rankings to fill up the remaining 3 pots.

32 teams slotted into 4 pots of 8 teams each

The rules while slotting the teams into the group were that there would not be more than one team from each zone in each group except for the European zone where there would be a maximum of 2 European teams in each group.

Below are the 8 groups of the FIFA WC 2018 Russia. 

FIFA World Cup 2018 - Draw Results - 8 groups

Group B seems to be most likely to be considered a Group of Death for this edition of the World Cup with Portugal and Spain featuring in the group opener and the presence of Morocco who performed quite strongly during qualifying as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran to round off the group. Though there are already claims of Germany having a tougher draw in Group F with a counter claim of Argentina facing a tricky group in Group D.

Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the Englishmen would have taken some inspiration from their U-19 boys who lifted the trophy in India?

Of FIFA World Cup celebrations and clean stadiums

The U-17 FIFA World Cup is currently underway in India and the U-17 national team had a commendable outing for their maiden appearance even though they lost all 3 games in the group stage and are knocked out. A first-ever goal scored in a football world cup for India in the match against Colombia could be hailed as the highlight.

In all those celebrations though, images have been making the rounds of all the mess left behind by the spectators. Is it too much to ask for to carry the waste to a bin on your way out? We keep grumbling about the mess at every corner in the country. Forget political weightage to the cleanliness drives. It's just a simple carry-and-drop to teh nearest bin. If it's full and overflowing and you cannot carry the waste to the next bin, no matter. At least the authorities have an inkling that the provisions for the waste are insufficient. Leaving the mess at the seats only makes it that much more difficult to clean.

There have been complaints raised against organisers for the lack of drinking water available, unclean toilets, lack of signage, and where there has been signage, access has been blocked off with no alternative directions available. That is something we need the organisers to own up responsibility for and ensure better arrangements as the tournament progresses.

For now, one step at a time we say. Let's start with ourselves. And the change shall follow.