WEEKLY WHINE

Can you beat the draw?

Yesterday’s draw for the 2015 Women’s World Cup set out the groups and the match schedule for the 24 teams that will participate in Canada next summer.

Of course, this being FIFA, they could not perform a simple draw without fucking it up. Although Sweden are currently ranked fifth in the world, they did not earn a space in the first pot. Instead, sixth ranked Brazil were placed amongst the top seeds. Then, during the draw, FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke inexplicably failed to recognise that Brazil and Colombia are both CONMEBOL members.

But what about you? Is that how you would allocate the pots, or do you want to do something different? Do you want to see what would happen if Sweden were seeded? Do you want to see what would happen if FIFA did not depend upon Jérôme Valcke’s confederation recognition skills? Well, now you can find out! We here at GoobNet have prepared the below utility to help you perform the draw yourself. To start you out, we have arranged the teams into the actual pots: the seeded teams in Pot 1; the remaining AFC, CONCACAF, and OFC teams in Pot 2; the remaining CAF and CONMEBOL teams in Pot 3; and the remaining UEFA teams in Pot 4.

But you are of course free to use your own arrangement. Just drag the teams and drop them into any pot you like, select whether you want to activate confederation protection [which, if activated, will ensure that each group contains either CEIL(N/6)-1 or CEIL(N/6) teams from each confederation, where N is the total number of teams from that confederation], and then get to it.

Once you’ve completed your draw, we invite you to send it to us at <goobnet‍@‍goobnet.net>. Can you come up with a draw that is better than the real one? [Most likely.]

Confederation protection

START DRAW

DRAW TEAM DRAW GROUP

RESTART DRAW