NOS Football•
Bigger, crazier and more orchestrated than ever: the draw for the 2026 World Cup will be very different from that for previous world championships.
A show that will last a total of two days starts at 6 p.m. Dutch time in Washington. At the end of the two-day event, the Dutch national team will know which countries it will play against in the group stage of the World Cup and at what times and locations this will happen.
How will the draw work and why is President Donald Trump expected to be the center of attention?
A lot has changed, but one thing has remained the same as at previous World Cups: the Netherlands will be paired with three other countries. Orange is in pot 1, which means that it avoids many top countries that are also in that pot. Ronald Koeman’s team will have opponents from pot 2, pot 3 and pot 4.
A total of twelve groups will be drawn today by some “FIFA legends”. Former England international Rio Ferdinand has been announced as the ‘conductor’, with former American football star Samantha Johnson as his assistant.
Furthermore, it is chock full of former American and Canadian sports heroes. Tom Brady and Eli Manning (American football), Shaquille O’Neal (basketball), Wayne Gretzky (ice hockey) and Aaron Judge (baseball) are all involved in the draw. The presenters of the show have also already been announced: they will be model Heidi Klum and actors Kevin Hart and Danny Ramirez.
No clarity yet about the schedule
Of the 48 countries that will ultimately play in the World Cup, 42 are currently known. Play-offs will be played in February for the last six starting tickets by countries from all over the world.
Today, the Dutch team does not yet know on which dates or at which locations they will play next summer. FIFA wants to get matches at the most favorable times for TV rights and needs time to sort that out, so a second show on Saturday will reveal the fixtures, locations and start times of all 104 matches.
The countries are divided among the pots as follows:
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The Dutch team is in pot 1 with these countries -
Morocco, among others, is in pot 2 -
Norway is in pot 3 with top striker Haaland -
Curaçao is in pot 4, which may also include Italy and Suriname
President Trump will watch the draw from the front row, his spokesman confirmed this week. It is expected that he will receive the ‘peace prize’ that FIFA suddenly created last month.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino maintains good ties with Trump and, for example, was present at the peace summit on Gaza in Egypt at the president’s invitation last October. Infantino declared last month that “football is the best remedy against war and violence”, which would also be the reason for awarding the peace prize, although it is not known how the winner will be determined.
Trump also seems to have been taken into account in terms of entertainment. Not only will the draw include a real ‘halftime show’ with Andrea Bocelli, Nicole Scherzinger and Robbie Williams, a performance by The Village People has also been announced. Their number YMCA from 1978 can regularly be heard at Trump’s speeches and events.
Finally, it will be interesting to see where the favorites for World Cup victory are classified. According to betting companies and data agencies European champion Spain is the biggest chance to become world champion (17 percent), followed by France (14.1 percent) and England (11.8 percent).
The Netherlands is in eighth place in those predictions, with a 5.2 percent chance of winning the tournament.
The four countries ranked highest in the FIFA world rankings will be put on different ‘paths’ in the draw and will only meet in the semi-finals. This applies to Spain, defending champion Argentina, France and England.
Here’s a breakdown of the information presented in the provided HTML snippets, focusing on the football (soccer) context:
Context: The HTML appears to be from a news article or presentation about the draw for a football tournament. The key information revolves around the different “pots” (groups) of teams.
Key Elements and What They Mean:
* <figure>: This HTML tag is used to contain the images and their captions. Each figure represents an image related to the topic of the pots.
* <button>: Each button is designed to open the image to full screen including the copyright: NOS
* <img alt=""...>: these are the images of different countries that are at different pots.
* The Dutch team is in pot 1 with these countries: This is a caption for the frist image,placing the Netherlands in the first pot of the draw.
* Morocco,among others,is in pot 2: This is a caption for the second image,placing Morocco in the second pot.
* Norway is in pot 3 with top striker Haaland: This indicates that Norway is in pot 3,and highlights the presence of the star player Erling Haaland.
In summary: The HTML snippets describe the pot distribution for an upcoming football tournament. The images shows some of the teams in each pot (Netherlands in Pot 1, Morocco in Pot 2, and Norway in Pot 3).
