Spain v Cameroon and South Africa for World Cup seeding

Spain are likely to be confirmed tomorrow as FIFA's eighth and final choice of seeded nations for the 2002 World Cup finals.

The only serious challengers to the Spanish ranking among the top eight nations is Portugal relegating England to the second batch of eight countries in Saturday's draw in the Korean port city of Pusan.

But plans to seed an African nation for the first time will be discussed tomorrow with Olympic winners Cameroon and South Africa also contenders for a top spot.

FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper confirmed today that seven of the eight places for seeded countries have already been allocated ahead of tomorrow's meeting of the Organising Committee of FIFA.

This meeting will decide the final seedings ahead of the draw in the BEXCO Exhibition Hall on December 1st.

The top seven seeds are France as defending champions and co-hosts Japan and South Korea and Cooper confirmed today that Brazil, Argentina, Germany and Italy are to be the other four seeds before the debate starts on the final member of the eight-team elite.

The seeding system is based on a country's performance in the 1998 finals and their current FIFA ranking.

This leaves Spain ahead of England and Portugal even though Spain did not reach the second round in France four years ago.

A plan to seed an African nation such as Cameroon or South Africa is also to be discussed tomorrow with FIFA keen to seed away from Europe and South America for its final seeding place.

FIFA are still looking to smoothe relations with South Africa and the African nations after the farcical events at its decision last year to hand the 2006 World Cup finals to Germany.

On Saturday the eight teams in the top seeds with be drawn away from each other with the remaining 24 teams drawn at random by stars such as Pele and Michel Platini.

No more than two teams from the same FIFA zone can be drawn against each other in the eight groups of four which reduces options for the draw still further and has seen e-mail claims to this web site that South Korea will definitely land England in their group on Saturday. Brazil also believe that they will certainly be based in Japan along with Germany and Italy with China ready to move to a Korean training centre next spring.

These sorts of rumours are rife around a major FIFA draw especially for the World Cup finals but the facts are that the tournament starts on May 31st in Seoul with groups A, B, C and D based in Korea and groups E, F, G and H in Japan with the final on June 30th in Yokohama.

Seeding South Africa would be blatant piece of political PR by FIFA but cannot be ruled out.

Cameroon are an excellent side who could wreak havoc with predictions of another win for the major world powers but the compromise of Spain in the eighth top seeding position should be confirmed tomorrow.

The meeting of the Organising Committee chaired by UEFA president Lennart Johansson is set to last a long time with no decision to be announced until evening in Europe.

The likely seeds for Sunday's draw:

France, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and Spain in the top group.

Then group two of Portugal, Sweden, Croatia, Belgium, Denmark, England, South Africa and Ireland.

Group three to be Paraguay, Turkey, Cameroon, Poland, Slovenia, China, Ecuador and Uruguay.

Group four: US, Nigeria, Mexico, Tunisia, Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Mexico.