For the second straight World Cup, FIFA has chosen to solely use its October world rankings to determine the teams in the top pot. The top seven ranked teams in the October rankings in addition to host Brazil will be in the seeded pot, and Klinsmann says that past World Cup experience should matter and that the current process leads to an unbalance among the groups.
“Looking at Pot No. 1 and the seeding of the World Cup, it kind of makes you think a little bit, if this is the right way to do it," Klinsmann told USSoccer.com on Tuesday. "You have to find a way hopefully to make everybody happy. It’s not going to happen, nobody will be happy with everything. But, when you have a Pot No. 1, you expect countries in there that really proved it in World Cups, in the history of the World Cup. Now you see teams that haven’t really done that much in previous World Cups and you wonder ‘Why is it that way now?’
“The consequence is that you will have a couple of groups getting drawn on Dec. 6 in Brazil that are Groups of Death that will be killer groups; there’s not even one easy team or whatever. Then you will find maybe two or three groups that are much easier, at least on paper easier.
"It’s unbalanced now with that seeding procedure and it will cause a lot of question marks, a lot of discussion and debate once the groups are finalized. It is what it is, but I’m not very happy with it.”
The teams that are certain to be seeded for the draw will be Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Belgium and Switzerland. Uruguay will also seal a seed if it can get by Jordan in a two-leg intercontinental playoff. If it does not, then the Netherlands will snatch the final seed.
The USA wound up ranked 13th in the world following a successful qualifying campaign that resulted in the top spot in the CONCACAF Hexagonal.
