World Cup 2018 draw: how it all works and which teams England should avoid

The highly anticipated draw for the 2018 World Cup finals kicks off in Moscow on Friday afternoon and BBC Two will be covering all the action from 3pm.

The Match of the Day and BT Sport football host Gary Lineker, who has faced criticism for taking on the role after previously speaking out against Fifa over its various corruption scandals, will be co-presenting with the Russian journalist Maria Komandnaya.

The 32 teams who have qualified will be split into eight four-team groups, drawn from four pots. The groups will contain one team from each pot.

Teams have been placed in the pots according to their position in the Fifa world rankings for October. The exception to that are the hosts Russia, who are automatically in pot one.

So Pot One contains the seven highest-ranked teams plus Russia, pot two has the next eight teams in the rankings, and so on. England are in pot two.

England can face only one other European team as there can be a maximum of two European sides per group. No other football confederation can have more than one team in a group, so no South American sides will go head-to-head in the group phase for example.

The lineup of the pots is

Pot one Russia (hosts), Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Argentina, Belgium, Poland, France

Pot two Spain, Peru, Switzerland, England, Colombia, Uruguay, Mexico, Croatia

Pot three Denmark, Iceland, Costa Rica, Sweden, Tunisia, Egypt, Senegal, Iran

Pot four Serbia, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Morocco, Panama, South Korea, Saudi Arabia

The four pots will be emptied by drawing the eight teams they each contain one by one and placing them in the eight groups of four teams (Groups A to H). Russia, as hosts, will occupy the top position in Group A, while the seven other seeds will occupy the top spots in Groups B to H. The positions of all the other teams (from pots two, three and four) will be decided when they are drawn.

As is customary at final draws, a ball will be drawn from the team pots and then another from the group pots to determine the position in which the team in question will play.

England’s worst-case scenario

Based on the latest Fifa rankings Germany, Costa Rica and Nigeria.

Guardian verdict Brazil, Iceland and Nigeria.

Best-case scenario

Based on Fifa rankings Russia, Senegal and Saudi Arabia.

Guardian verdict Poland, Tunisia and Panama.

Lineker and Komandnaya will be assisted at the draw by eight major names from World Cups past: France’s Laurent Blanc, England’s Gordon Banks, Brazil’s Cafu, Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro, Uruguay’s Diego Forlán, Argentina’s Diego Maradona, Spain’s Carles Puyol and Russia’s Nikita Simonyan.

In the UK, if you can’t watch BBC Two then you can listen to it on Radio 5 Live. Meanwhile, you can also follow Simon Burnton talking you the draw – and all the razzmatazz around it – as it happens on the Guardian website. After the draw, readers can join the discussion and ask our expert panel questions during a special Facebook Live at www.facebook.com/guardianfootball.