World Cup draw buildup, Premier League news and more – football live

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Our David Hytner is in Washington for the World Cup draw. And he has an important message in this analysis piece: amid all the hoopla, Friday’s event must be all about firing the starting gun on football’s biggest show.

As in every World Cup, there’ll be a clamour to coin a ‘Group of Death’. In theory, we could have one for 2026 comprising Argentina, Morocco, Italy and Norway.

But, remember kids, never rule out the least chilling member of the quartet. How about 2014 when Costa Rica won a Group D featuring England, Italy and Uruguay. Lest we forget, Roy Hodgson’s side were killed off after just two games.

It’s 188 days until World Cup 2026 but precisely zero days until the World Cup draw! Let’s start with the basics and this highly entertaining Explainer piece from Tom Lutz.

Before you go in depth, a quick note that the 12 groups for the World Cup will be formed by one team from each pot.

Pot 1: Canada, Mexico, USA, Spain, Argentina, France, England, Brazil, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany.

Pot 2: Croatia, Morocco, Colombia, Uruguay, Switzerland, Japan, Senegal, Iran, South Korea, Ecuador, Austria, Australia.

Pot 3: Norway, Panama, Egypt, Algeria, Scotland, Paraguay, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa.

Pot 4: Jordan, Cape Verde, Ghana, Curaçao, Haiti, New Zealand, four European playoff teams, two intercontinental playoff teams.

Preamble

It’s World Cup draw day! Beyond the overbloated nonsense and political posturing, this is still must-watch TV/radio/live blog as theoretical games we play on FIFA actually become wallchart reality. The whole shebang starts at around 5pm although it’ll be a while after that before any names are actually drawn.

Beyond that, just two days after the last one was completed, there’s another round of Premier League matches. This is Matchweek 15 and yet the table still looks a bit weird and unsettled. As The Anfield Wrap’s Phil Blundell wrote on X: “Really funny how the Premier League season is basically everyone bar Wolves fans, Arsenal fans and City fans going ‘how are we below them?’

Righty, while keeping one eye on the Ashes, keep the other one on here where we’ll have loads of team news, manager press conferences, World Cup draw buildup and much, much more!