World Cup draw explained - pots in full and who…

World Cup draw explained - pots in full and who England could draw

The World Cup draw for the 2022 group stages will take place on April 1 and three home nations are still in the draw for the FIFA tournament.

England go into pot 1 for the Qatar tournament with the other highest seeds, while one of Wales or Scotland could still qualify.

Scotland's playoff game with Ukraine has been postponed due to Vladimir Putin's invasion of the country by Russian troops. Should they beat 'The Heroes', they will go into a playoff final with Wales.

Gareth Bale's stunning brace allowed the Red Dragons to triumph in their playoff against Austria in Cardiff this month.

England will be hoping to avoid a nasty draw with tough teams featuring in the remaining pots.

What time is the World Cup draw in the UK?

The BBC has coverage of the draw on BBC One and Two, as well as online and the BBC iPlayer (AFP/Getty Images)

The World Cup draw is on Friday, April 1 and coverage begins at 4:45pm (BST) on BBC One.

Coverage will continue until 6pm, when it will be moved to BBC Two and the draw itself will have commentary from Jonathan Pearce.

The actual World Cup event will be a winter tournament this year, running from November 13 to December 26. It was moved due to the extremely hot summer conditions in the Middle Eastern state.

The tournament has lived in the shadow of allegations of corruption involving the awarding of the tournament, which Qatar denied and investigations are still ongoing, as well as the 'slave-like' treatment of workers in the building of stadiums.

Qatar maintains only three work-related deaths occurred between 2014 and 2020 and they argue that estimates of 6,500 dead workers by The Guardian in 2021 include people who died after living and working in the country.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) believes there were 50 deaths just in 2021.

NGO Human Rights Watch condemned Qatar in a 2021 report that said migrant workers were continuing to live in poor conditions.

They said: "Human Rights Watch spoke to 93 migrant workers working for 60 different employers and companies between January 2019 and May 2020, all of whom reported some form of wage abuse by their employer such as unpaid overtime, arbitrary deductions, delayed wages, withholding of wages, unpaid wages, or inaccurate wages."

How does the World Cup draw work?

The draw is in Zurich and could see hosts Qatar facing the likes of Germany or the Netherlands (FIFA via Getty Images)

One country from each of the four pots will be drawn to make eight groups of four.

The 32-team tournament will see hosts Qatar drawn into Group A and the pots are split based on FIFA rankings.

Each group cannot have more than one team from each confederation, except for UEFA teams who are allowed two.

England is in pot one alongside the following teams and therefore cannot be drawn against them:

Qatar
Brazil
France
Belgium
Portugal
Argentina
Spain

Normally a country will be drawn into a group with pre-arranged fixtures. However, this tournament is different as the hosts aim to arrange matches at a time FIFA says will try to "provide a more beneficial kick-off time for audiences at home".