12 groups of 4..........half go on, half get out...me who knows stats, math, clear favoritism.....the Europeans have more countries than there are groups, so they are the only confederation, as Fifa calls the continents.......to double up.....its fixed...

...16 slots for Europe, the world's 2nd smallest continent...Casino Royale, matthus, cards, 007?  Or balls?  Germany beats Hungary, Magical Magyars, who beat West Germany, in the group stage, like 8 - 2.........only to lose the final to the same team, poison?  Almost undoubtedly...that was the 1950s.........cheating galore...

None other than the soccer legend Diego Maradona claimed the draw was rigged to favor the host Italians over defending champion Argentina. Those who saw conspiracy speculated that Loren had magnetized her rings to pick a certain magnetic ball out of the pot.

At the draw for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, the television network Sky Italia thought it saw duplicity in the way the former German soccer star Lothar Matthäus selected Italy’s group. The station claimed that the balls had been heated and cooled so that Matthäus knew which teams he was selecting as he placed Italy in a daunting group with the United States, the Czech Republic and Ghana.

“The Italians are mad if they think that,” Matthäus said at the time. “That is utter nonsense.”

Considering that Italy won the World Cup that year, Matthäus had a point.

Of course, soccer’s world governing body, known by its acronym FIFA, steadfastly denies that high jinks are involved. Outside experts say there is no proof that the process is illusory.

“We are not David Copperfield, and Siegfried and Roy,” Guido Tognoni, a former spokesman for FIFA, said in Las Vegas at the draw for the 1994 World Cup.

Yet conspiracy theories abound. In 2005, the issue was part of a final exam in a cryptology course at the University of Virginia.

Part of the suspicion comes because soccer is a global sport that evokes national passions, said Mike Woitalla, the executive editor of Soccer America magazine.

Americans do not usually root as a nation in a sporting sense, cheering instead for our alma maters and local professional sports teams. The Olympics are an exception, and the Super Bowl draws more interest in the commercials than the game. But much of the rest of the world reaches a fever pitch over soccer.

“In America, you might have fans from Boston thinking they were robbed by a bad call, but in soccer it’s an entire country feeling that somebody treated them unfairly,” Woitalla said. “It’s a fan’s feelings multiplied by millions.”