The draw to set the groups up will take place this Saturday, 29th of June, in Minsk at 10:30 am (7:30 GMT)
20 teams will be battling in the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup – Europe Qualifier Moscow. Between the 19th and 27th of July, the Russian capital will host the fight for one of the five remaining tickets to the FIFA Beach Soccer Worldwide.
The list of participating teams goes as follows:
1. AZERBAIJAN
2. BELARUS
3. CZECH REPUBLIC
4. ESTONIA
5. FRANCE
6. GERMANY
7. HUNGARY
8. ITALY
9. KAZAKHSTAN
10. LATVIA
11. LITHUANIA
12. MOLDOVA
13. NORWAY
14. POLAND
15. PORTUGAL
16. RUSSIA (HOST)
17. SPAIN
18. SWITZERLAND
19. TURKEY
20. UKRAINE
Once the list of participants have been closed, the draw will now take place to distribute the 20 teams into 5 groups of four teams.
The best 3 ranked sides of each group, plus the best fourth-ranked side of the 5 groups will progress to the Round of 16.
The Official draw will now take place on Saturday 29th of June, at 10:30 (7:30 GMT) in Minsk, and it will be streamed LIVE through Beach Soccer Worldwide Official Facebook Page.
Draw procedures:
The 5 highest ranked European MA´s according to the BSWW Overall Ranking (updated May 2019) will be placed as top seeds of each group. Being Russia as host country allocated as A1, Portugal (2.414 points) will be located in position B1, Italy (1.930 points) will be seeded as C1, Spain (1.376 points) is the next in the ranking seeded as D1 and finally Switzerland (1.354 points)will be the first seed of group E as E1.
The remaining (15) MA´s will be placed in three (3) pots: 1, 2 and 3. The BSWW Overall Ranking’s position of each MA is considered to determine in which pot every team is placed.
POT 1 will have the next five (5) highest-ranked MA´s: UKR (795 points), POL (708 points), BLR (606 points), FRA (484 points) and GER (481 points). Teams in POT 1 will be drawn into positions A2 to E2.
POT 2 will have the next five (5) highest-ranked MA´s: CZE (478 points), HUN (442 points), AZE (421 points), TUR (352 points) and NOR (233 points). Teams in POT 1 will be drawn into positions A3 to E3.
POT 3 will have the next and last five (5) highest-ranked MA´s: EST (227 points), KAZ (216 points), MDA (193 points), LTU (162 points) and LVA (20 points). Teams in POT 1 will be drawn into positions A4 to E4.