World Cup 2018 Structure and Bracket
Check out the accompanying podcast here. FIFA decides based on their metrics and rankings of nations the number of berths from each continental zone. This is how 2018 will look. UEFA Europe - 14 CAF Africa- 5 AFC Asia - 4.5 CONMEBOL South America - 4.5 CONCACAF North, Central and Caribbean - 3.5 OFC - Oceana - .5 The fifth team from Asia (Australia) entered a playoff against the fourth placed team from CONCACAF (Honduras). The top team from Oceana (New Zealand) entered a playoff against the fifth place team from CONMEBOL (Peru). 32 teams entered into the 2018 World Cup. A draw determined the make-up of 8 groups of 4 nations. The draw was weighted or seeded by creating 4 pots of 8 nations starting with the host country and then from top to bottom based on FIFA rankings. Then from there a nation was selected out of each pot for a group. This artificially separated the nations at the top and bottom from eachother. Even though everything is by the numbers, FIFA ch...