The clock is ticking as the football world is waiting in suspense for the draw on Friday. FIFA World Cup Brazil 2014 promises to be the greatest show on earth and Team Melli is proudly taking part amongst the elite of world football.

 Iran is in pot 3 of the draw, with each of the six group

 FIFA confirmed the procedure that will govern the selection of the eight groups for the 2014 World Cup.

At present, all 32 teams are seeded into four pots, and one team from each will be selected to form a group. This will happen eight times, but with a caveat: No more than two European sides and one South American side can go into the same group.

Not surprisingly, Pot 1 contains the eight highest-ranked teams according to the October FIFA rankings. In Pot 2 are the five African representatives, as well as Chile and Ecuador. Pot 3 consists of the AFC and CONCACAF participants, and the remaining nine European nations are bundled into Pot 4.

There will be a pre-draw on Friday to move one of the nine into Pot 2, which currently consists of just seven teams.

It’s because of this quirk that FIFA have also created a temporary Pot X populated by the four South American outfits in Pot 1: Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay. The three that are not drawn against the European side that moves to Pot 2 will go back into Pot 1.

Leaving aside the complexity of this World Cup draw, what is certain for Iran is that it will not be grouped with the Asian teams or with United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras. As such , Team Melli will not have the chance to play another thriller against USA similar to the famous World Cup 1998 encounter in Lyon where Iran won its first and only match in the 3 participation in the World Cup finals.

This grouping will also deprive Iran from a revenge match against Mexico which beat Team Melli in Nuremburg during the World Cup 20-06 in Germany.

Depend on the luck of the draw, Team Melli could end up in an impossible group where qualification to the next round could be more like a dream, or it might stand a very good chance if the teams in the group are close to its own level.

An impossible group would be something like Brazil , Chile , Iran and Italy. Such grouping will certainly be called a group of death as it will have three of the most in form teams in the world. The 3 star studded teams will fight quite hard for qualification and look at Iran to be a platform or punching box.

On the other hand , a draw for a group containing Switzerland, Cameroon , Iran and Russia, will be a mouthwatering chance for the proud Persian to make an impact. Not that the group can be called easy as both the European teams are quite strong and have played some brilliant matches, however , nether Switzerland nor Russia have any World Cup pedigree and that will be easier for Team Melli to tackle. Cameroon has lost quite a bit of its edge lately despite the return of the troublemaker Samuel Eto.

In Iran, the views are mixed. Ando Teymourian does not wish to be grouped with strong teams, while Head of the League Committee, Mehdi Taj hopes that Team Melli is group with the strongest teams in the competition. Each person has his own reasoning, but comes the kick off on June next year, these calculations and predictions might mean nothing. Football is a strange game and results are not always to forms and per-calculated.

In any case, we do hope that Team Melli gets a fair draw.