Here Are The Official Pots For The 2014 World Cup Draw

FIFA just officially announced the pots for the 2014 World Cup draw, which will take place Friday in Brazil.

It's generally just as we expected.

Pot 1 consists of the top eight teams in the world based on FIFA's (flawed) ranking system. Pot 2 will consist of five teams from Africa, two teams from South America, and one other European team. Pot 3 consists of four teams from Asia and four teams from North America. Pot 4 will consist of eight teams from Europe.

There's also this new thing called "Pot X," which we'll explain below.

The groups will be made from these four pots (there are eight groups of four teams, one from each pot):

There's one small wrinkle, Pot X - which is a sub-pot within Pot 1 and consists of the four South American Pot 1 teams (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia).

This is how it works.

One of the European teams from Pot 4 will get randomly drawn into Pot 2 (so all pots will have eight teams). That team will automatically then be drawn with a "Pot X" team from Pot 1, so that three European teams cannot end up in one group.

In addition, the two South America teams from Pot 2 (Chile, Ecuador) can't be drawn into a group with a Pot X team - so they will be drawn with one of the other four teams from Pot 1.

Seems needlessly confusing! FIFA!

Again, this could be a nightmare for the U.S. team.

Pot 1:

• Brazil (Pot X)
• Spain
• Argentina (Pot X)
• Colombia (Pot X)
• Switzerland
• Belgium
• Germany
• Uruguay (Pot X)

Pot 2:

• Ghana
• Cameroon
• Ivory Coast
• Algeria
• Nigeria
• Chile
• Ecuador
• EUROPEAN TEAM X

Pot 3:

• United States
• Mexico
• Honduras
• Costa Rica
• Iran
• South Korea
• Japan
• Australia