World Cup 2006 seeds: England will go into next summer's World Cup held in uncharacteristically high regard after Fifa ranked Sven-Goran Eriksson's side as the second-best in the tournament, ensuring they will be among the top seeds in Friday's draw.
The formula announced yesterday to determine which eight of the 32 finalists will be seeded unexpectedly placed England behind only Brazil and ahead of Spain, Germany, Mexico, France, Argentina and Italy, all of whom will be placed in separate groups when the draw for the finals takes place in Leipzig.
Their lofty ranking ensures that Eriksson's side will avoid most of the favourites to win the trophy in the opening stages and should avoid a group as testing as the one in Japan-Korea in 2002 when, as an unseeded finalist, they were drawn against Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria.
Eriksson's side are not assured of an easy ride however. Among the unseeded European teams lying in wait are the beaten Euro 2004 finalists Portugal, England's conquerors in that tournament, the Czech Republic and Holland.
If Beckham and Co are the chief beneficiaries of Fifa's chosen method, which combined the questionable status of the official world rankings with the more reliable guide of form at the last two World Cup finals, then the Dutch are its biggest casualties. With Fifa placing the emphasis on performance in 2002, when England reached the quarter-finals and the Dutch failed to qualify, Holland were left nursing a grievance and facing a potentially daunting route through the group stage.
Eriksson was predictably pleased with the seeding and said his side deserved to be ranked among the best in the world.
"I think it's right too. We are one of the teams that have the potential to do very well in Germany and we have some of the best players in the world."
While there is a logic to the seeding system that does not mean the draw will be without confusion. In order to ensure both a geographical spread in each group and no more than two European teams in any one group the unseeded teams have been split into two pots of eight, one of seven and a single 'special pot' containing Serbia-Montenegro, the lowest-ranked of the nine unseeded European teams.
Eriksson can at least afford to disregard them as he ponders the permutations en route to Lisbon today, where he will watch Manchester United attempt to salvage their Champions League campaign before heading for Leipzig tomorrow.
Serbia-Montenegro will be placed in a group with Brazil, Argentina or Mexico to split the European sides, but that apart a daunting group is eminently possible. Pot two contains the qualifiers from Africa, South America and Oceania; with Australia, an Ivory Coast side featuring Didier Drogba and Paraguay all potentially troublesome.
Germany will open the World Cup in Munich on June 9th while Brazil will start their campaign for a sixth title in Berlin on June 13th.
In a break with the past, FIFA have also ruled that any player selected to play in the finals will not be allowed to play any other competitive match after May 15th, the deadline for the announcement of the finalists' 23-man squads.
The only exception will be for those players involved in the Champions League final which will now be held in Paris on May 17th rather than May 24th. The UEFA Cup final in Eindhoven has been brought forward from May 17th to May 10th.
