War, weather, commercial concerns and long days' journeys into the footballing night.
Anyone dreaming that football can be cocooned from the real world faces a rude awakening whenever qualifying draws take place. The harsh vicissitudes of war, politics, weather and the crunch of carbon footprints invade football, as if they’d ever left. Sport and politics don’t mix? Try reading the small print of qualifying draws. It’s a window on the real world.
The caveats for the European section of the 2026 World Cup qualifying draw are lengthy and raise questions long after the actual draw takes place in Zurich today. They include the usual seeding formats, the political, weather and travel restrictions and also the intriguing demand that it “fulfils the expectations of commercial partners”, according to the Uefa small-print.
What are these “expectations” and why should “commercial partners” have a say in a sporting draw? Were Uefa and Fifa typically dancing to paymasters tune? It boils down to the standard fare of keeping the big boys apart in the pots, ensuring the heavyweights progress to the World Cup, exactly what the marketing men and women want.
That’s effectively done by use of world rankings, but the ambiguous phrase will doubtless rattle the conspiracy theorists. Long theses full of algorithms and assumptions have already been written on the fairness or otherwise of such draws.
Wait until they look at Fifa’s Club World Cup draw full of Infantinotifications. Amazingly, Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami were parachuted into the competition and then automatically placed in fourth position in group A so they open the tournament at Hard Rock Stadium, Miami. Messi kicking off the competition. Fifa couldn’t have scripted it better.
Back in Europe, Uefa “expectations” are also that games take place, satisfying broadcasters and sponsors. So other restrictions are built into the draw to ensure that. The number of restrictions is growing. As well as being “fair for the participating teams” and the commercial partners’ stipulation, the draw must ensure “with a high degree of probability that the fixture can take place as scheduled”. So the draw is then influenced by “competition-related reasons”, “prohibited team clashes”, “winter venue restrictions” and “excessive travel restrictions”.