On Friday, the draw for the 2018 World Cup will take place.
It will be conducted in the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia from 4pm.
The draw will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 and Telemundo in the US and on TSN in Canada.
It will be co-hosted by former Barcelona and Spurs striker and now TV sports personality Gary Lineker along with Russian sports journalist Maria Komandnaya.
They will be assisted by former players representing each of the winning nations – Diego Maradona (Argentina), Gordon Banks (England), Miroslav Klose (Germany), Laurent Blanc (France), Cafu (Brazil, Carles Puyol (Spain), Diego Forlan (Uruguay) and Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), along with Nikita Simonyan representing the host nation Russia.
The 31 qualified teams that qualified along with host nation Russia have been split into four (4) pots, based on the FIFA world rankings as of October 2017 edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Rankings.
One team from each pot will be drawn together into one of the eight World Cup groups.
The draw sequence will start with pot 1 and end with pot 4. Each pot will be completely emptied before moving on to the next.
FIFA’s general principle is to ensure that no group has more than one team from the same qualification zone drawn into it. This is applicable to all zones except Europe, which is represented by 14 teams. Each group must have at least one but no more than two European teams drawn into it. As such, six out of the eight groups will feature two European teams.
The opening game is on June 14, 2018. Hosts Russia will play the country drawn into position A2.
The World Cup lasts until the final on 15 July and is being held in 11 Host Cities in Russia. In total, 64 matches will be played.
The final will also be staged at the Luzhniki Stadium. The kick-off time for both the opening match and the final is 10:00 AM ET.
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