How the final draw works

For the final draw of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015, these are the procedural details for the 24 teams that have qualified for the tournament, dividing them into six groups of four.

Qualified teams
 
- AFC: Australia, China PR, Japan, Korea Republic, Thailand
- CAF: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria
- CONCACAF: Canada (hosts), Costa Rica, Mexico, United States
- CONMEBOL: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador
- OFC: New Zealand
- UEFA: England, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland

Principles

- As a general principle, no group can contain more than one team from the same geographical zone. However, given that there will be eight UEFA representatives present at Canada 2015, two groups will inevitably contain two European teams. 
- The Organising Committee decided that six teams would be seeded, with each one playing in a different group, namely Canada (host nation), Germany, Japan (defending world champions), United States, Brazil and France. These sides will automatically be placed in position 1 of their respective pools.

Pots

The 24 teams have been divided into four pots of six teams, with the seeded nations placed in Pot 1:

Pot 1: Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United States
Pot 2: Cameroon, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria
Pot 3: Australia, China PR, Colombia, Ecuador, Korea Republic, Thailand
Pot 4: England, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland

Draw procedure  

- Final Draw begins with Pot 1
A slip of paper bearing Canada’s name is placed inside a red ball, while the other seeds will be in white balls. Canada will be drawn first and placed in Group A, in position 1. The other balls from Pot 1 will then be drawn and placed in position 1 in their respective groups.

- Pot 2 drawn
As teams are drawn from Pot 2, they are placed in a horizontal fashion, from left to right, i.e. from Group A to Group F. Their position within the groups will be selected randomly, by drawing yellow balls numbered 2 to 4, with position 1 already taken by the relevant seeded team. It is worth remembering at this stage that no section can contain more than one team per confederation.

Consequently, CONCACAF teams such as Costa Rica and Mexico cannot be put in the same group as Canada or USA, because they are members of the same confederation. If this situation arises, the team in question is simply moved to the next available group.

- Pot 3 drawn
As teams are drawn from Pot 3, they are placed in a horizontal fashion, from left to right, i.e. from Group A to Group F. Their position within the groups will be selected randomly, by drawing yellow balls numbered 2 to 4, with position 1 already taken by the relevant seeded team.

- Pot 4 drawn
As teams are drawn from Pot 4, they are placed in a horizontal fashion, from left to right, i.e. from Group A to Group F. Their position within the groups will be selected randomly, by drawing yellow balls numbered 2 to 4, with position 1 already taken by the relevant seeded team.

Again, given that eight UEFA representatives have qualified for the tournament, it will be impossible to allocate only one European team to each group. There will therefore be a second European team in the pools featuring Germany and France.