On April 2, Beijing time, the group draw ceremony of the 2022 World Cup will be held. Fans and friends must remember the oolong incident that occurred during the Champions League round of 16 draw, so will the World Cup draw repeat the same mistakes?
Champions League draw, oolong farce
Last December' round of 16 draw in the Champions League was a big mistake. In the first draw, Manchester United and Villarreal had a group stage match, but they were drawn together, so Arshavin drew again, the yellow draw was drawn to Manchester City, and later Manchester United drew to The Greater Paris.
Immediately afterward, Atletico were drawn as non-seeded teams, but before the seeded teams were drawn, the small ball with the words Manchester United written on it was not put into the draw pool, and finally Atletico drew Bayern. As an opponent encountered in the group stage of Atletico, the small ball with Liverpool written on it has been placed among atletico's possible opponents.
As a result, UEFA had to re-draw all the lots, which led to a formal round of 16 matchup: Manchester United vs Atletico Madrid, Paris vs Real Madrid, Villarreal vs Juve.
Similar to the Champions League, the World Cup draw has also had problems, but it has not been re-drawn.
40 years ago, the World Cup was drawn once by mistake
The 1982 World Cup was the first 24-team World Cup, with 14 teams from Europe, 4 teams from South America, 2 teams from Africa, 2 teams from Central and North America, 1 team from Asia, and 1 team from Oceania, which was divided into 6 groups with 4 teams each.
Six seeded teams and their groups were identified in advance: Italy First Group, West Germany Second Group, Argentina Third Group, England Fourth Group, Host Spain Fifth Group, Brazil Sixth Group.
The main rule of the draw is to avoid two South American teams in the same group, that is, chile and Peru are not drawn to the third and sixth groups.
How? According to the method set by FIFA in advance, Chile and Peru are taken out first, and among the remaining teams, the first European team draws into the third group where Argentina is located, and the second European team draws into the sixth group where Brazil is located.
However, after the draw ceremony began, the then FIFA Secretary-General Blatter, who was in charge of the draw, forgot about it!
The first European team to draw was Belgium, but he was not placed in the third group, but directly in the first group! It wasn't until the second European team, Scotland, was drawn that Blatter reacted and hurried to put it in the third group.
Until this time, the others also realized that something had gone wrong, and after some quarrel, instead of repeating the draw, they put Belgium in the Argentine group and Scotland in the Brazilian group. Finally, Peru went to the Italian group and Chile to the West German group.
Since then, FIFA's World Cup draw ceremony has not made a major mistake again, will it repeat the same mistakes this time? Probably not, with the lessons of UEFA, FIFA will be more cautious.