England, Brazil six others seeded by FIFA for World Cup

Fifa has confirmed England will be one of eight seeded teams when the World Cup draw takes place on Friday. They will thus avoid favourites Spain and Brazil, who are two of the other seeded sides, in the group stage.

Argentina, Germany, Netherlands, holders Italy and hosts South Africa make up the remaining seeded nations.

The eight top seeds will all be in pot one, with the remaining three pots drawn on regional boundaries.

Each will face one team in pot two - a team from Asia, north or central America, or Oceania - one team from pot three - which has five African and three South American sides - and one from the exclusively European pot four. So the final pots are

Pot 1 - South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, England, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain.

Pot 2 - Australia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Honduras, Mexico, USA, New Zealand

Pot 3 - Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

Pot 4 - Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Switzerland