This means France are left as the most dangerous floating team who could be drawn in the same group as any one of the top eight seeds.

The draw for the finals will be made in a 90-minute television spectacular starting at 1700 GMT on Friday.

The 32 teams will be drawn into eight groups of four.

Apart from the seeds, teams will be placed in pots which will largely avoid teams from the same continent meeting each other.

Pot 1 will comprise the eight top seeds with South Africa already sure to play in Group A and in the opening match at Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium on 11 June.
 
The second pot will comprise eight teams from Asia, North and Central America and Oceania - Australia, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, North Korea, South Korea and United States.

The third pot will be the five other African countries and three remaining South American nations - Algeria, Cameroon, Chile, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The final pot is made up of the eight remaining teams from Europe -Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

The decision on how the seedings and pot grouping work means that the seeded teams would most fear being drawn into a group which included the United States from pot two, Ivory Coast from pot three and France from pot four.

Below are Pots for Friday's draw: eight groups of four countries to be drawn, each group containing one country from each pot.

Pot 1 (seeds): South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Argentina, England

Pot 2 (Asia, Oceania and North/Central America): Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Mexico, Honduras

Pot 3 (Africa and South America): Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay

Pot 4 (Europe): France, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia