The World Cup is back already? I still haven’t recovered England’s 0-0 with Algeria in South Africa last year! Are you sure you have got your dates correct?

Certain. In fact qualifying has already started in the race to reach Brazil in 2014.

Bad memories: England's goalless draw with Algeria in South Africa last summer

That’s madness! So how comes I still don’t know what group everyone is in?

Relax, it has only started in the regions of Asia and Central America. The draw for the European section as well as other regions is this Saturday in Rio, and will start at 7pm BST.

I see, it’s the same old process right?

Correct. There are 32 teams that will take part in the final tournament and Europe will provide 13 of them. There are 53 sides from UEFA vying for those spots, so competition as ever will be fierce.

That’s a lot of teams, how are FIFA going to organise that chaos?

The teams will initially be allocated to five pots of nine teams and one pot of eight teams based on the FIFA world rankings.

The top nine teams will be placed in pot one, the next best nine teams will be placed in pot two. This goes on until pot six, which will contain the eight lowest ranked teams.

So Jim Rosenthal and two other celebs won’t be drawing random balls from a hat?

It’s a bit more extravagant than that, Europe will have Ronaldo (the Brazilian one) and Santos star man Ganso deciding their fate.

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