France Complains of Injustice By Not Being Drawn in Pot 1 of the FIFA World Cup Draw

France, who were runners up in the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, have not been drawn in Pot 1 as they had expected. This has evoked a great feeling of resentment and anger from the French, who feel they are being vilified for Thierry Henry's handball incident against the Republic of Ireland.

They feel it is a great injustice that teams like England and Argentina have been included in Pot 1 despite England last winning the trophy in 1966, and Argentina facing a very tough qualification campaign. The incident involving Henry has left the whole world victimizing the player and the France national team, and they believe that they are now suffering as a result. They have been replaced in Pot 1 by the Netherlands.

The bad news does not end there for "Les Bleus" though, as there are suggestions that Henry could even be banned for the initial stages of the World Cup. This could be devastating news for the French, when coupled with the fact that they will certainly be facing one of the bigger footballing nations like Brazil or Spain in the group stages, as a result of missing out on Pot 1.

FIFA has responded though, and claimed that the seedings have been decided based on the form of the countries and the official FIFA rankings in the month of October. It has to be argued that the form displayed by the French over the qualifying campaign has been average, to say the least. Based on that it can be said that they only deserve the rankings that they earned.

The following are the teams placed in each pot.

Pot 1	Pot 2	Pot 3	Pot 4
South Africa	Australia	Algeria	Denmark
Brazil	Japan	Cameroon	France
Spain	Korea DPR	Cote de'Ivoire	Greece
Netherlands	Korea Republic	Ghana	Portugal
Italy	Honduras	Nigeria	Serbia
Germany	Mexico	Chile	Slovakia
Argentina	USA	Paraguay	Slovenia
England	New Zealand	Uruguay	Switzerland

The draw for the group stages will take place in Johannesburg, on 4th December, 2009.