What's Next for World Cup Teams?

Fans who might have once been happy that their team even qualified for the tournament now have raised expectations. While some will be placated with an appearance in the quarter-finals or even the round of 16, others won't accept anything less than welcoming their team back to the capital city with the World Cup trophy.

After watching favorite France leave the 2002 championships in the opening round, every team knows that landing in the right group can mean the difference between becoming national heroes or suffering home-country humiliation.

Luck of the draw

Exactly six months before the opening match in Munich, the 32 qualified teams will be divided into eight groups of four on Dec. 9 in the eastern German city of Leipzig. In the first two weeks of the World Cup, teams in each group play one another. The resulting top two teams in each group move on to the competition's second round.

Though teams know it's the luck of the draw that decides which opponents they'll face, one group, "the group of death," often sends four national team coaches and players cursing their fate as they prepare for preliminary matches against the world's top teams while having to watch teams of the calibre of, say, Angola advance in the second round against someone like Trinidad and Tobago.

"We don't have any influence on the drawing, so we are going to let ourselves be surprised by the results," said German team captain Michael Ballack

But World Cup Organizing Committee chairman and German soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer is less concerned with the match line-ups than a smooth draw.

"The soccer world is visiting Leipzig," he said. "Hopefully everything will go well, hopefully they can handle everything."

Worldwide media event

The World Cup organizing committee confirmed that the draw for the 2006 finals, running from June 9 to July 9, would be broadcast to over 320 million people in a total of 145 countries. Some 850 national and international journalists will be covering the event.

West Germany's 1990 World Cup winner Lothar Matthäus, who won a record 150 caps for his country, will be one of eight football greats to help make the group draw. German supermodel Heidi Klum and German sports commentator Reinhold Beckmann will moderate the event.

Germany, who are at the top of Group A, are the only team to already have been assigned a position. The heads of the other seven groups will be decided when members of FIFA, the world soccer governing body, meet on Dec. 6. Defending world champions Brazil are expected to sit atop Group F.

"There could hardly be a better collection of nations," said Organizing Committee Vice-President Wolfgang Niersbach. "Apart from Uruguay, all the previous champions are here and our motto of 'Welcome to all Friends Across the World' will have its first test on December 9."