what a farce

I've just watched the draw for this year's FIFA World Cup.

For a start, the event will be held in the winter time (for us Northern Hemisphere dwellers at least) in Qatar.  There have been many rumblings of corruption surrounding the awarding of the competition to that country but neither that, nor the timing of the matches, is the reason for my disgruntlement.

No, it all surrounds the draw itself.

Thirty-two teams split across 8 groups, with each team allocated into a "pot" dependent on their seeding for the competition.  Wales (if they qualify via a play-off) were in pot 4 - the lowest ranked.

So, teams from pot 1 were drawn first and allocated from Group A to Group H (are you still following?), then pot 2, etc until all competing countries were allotted into a qualification group.

Sounds simple right?  Draw out a country, put it in a group.

But no!

Because certain countries were members of the same football confederation, they could not be placed in the same group.  At one point, this saw a country (I think it was Morocco) being drawn in Group A, but having to be placed in Group F because that was the only one available!

This farcical situation occurred with such regularity that the whole thing, which should have taken fifteen minutes took over an hour and a half to complete!

They could really have just done away with the draw and placed the teams into groups along with others that it was OK to play against.

And what then happens if teams qualify from groups and are scheduled to meet in the knock-out rounds?  Do they get re-scheduled?  And what if two, say, African teams from the same confederation make it to the final?  Is it then decided by a round of rock, paper, scissors?

Of course not.  So why the machinations and complexity at the draw stage.

As if that weren't enough, the teams drawn from pots 2,3 and 4 had to be allocated a position in their respective group to decide the order of the matches.  What was the point of that?

And don't get me started on the main presenter, darling of the British football media Jernaine Jenas, who insisted on repeatedly pronouncing the letter H as "Haitch".  Please, you're speaking to the whole world - at least do it properly.