The last spot available in the Russia World Cup 2018 was taken yesterday with the classification of the Peru National Soccer Team which beat New Zealand 2-0. With this, and after three years of competition and 2,456 goals celebrated, the 32 teams that will participate in Russia 2018 are now decided.

The Russia 2018 is marked by the absence of historically strong teams such as Italy, Netherlands, Chile and the United States. 

Back in September the Organizing Committee of the FIFA Competitions had confirmed that the teams would be separated into 4 pots of 8 teams each. The October 2017 edition of the FIFA / Coca-Cola World Ranking was used to allocate all qualified teams to these pots according to their ranking in descending order after the host team, Russia, which takes the top seeding spot. The purpose of these pots as with past editions is that no group may have more than one team from any continental confederation with the exception of UEFA, which may have no more than two in a group.

Following this system, La Sele, Costa Rica’s Male National Soccer Team, was assigned to the third pot.The fact that the teams were allocated according to their ranking means that Costa Rica (as well as all other teams) will have to face in the worse case scenario two former world cup champion teams, contrary to what happened in Brazil 2014 when La Sele had to face Italy, England, and Uruguay.

The final pots for the final draw are established as follows:

The final draw is scheduled to take place on Friday, December 1 at Moscow’s State Kremlin Palace.