The assigned venues are almost more important to national coach Julian Nagelsmann at Friday’s World Cup draw in Washington than the preliminary round opponents—for several reasons.
The DFB has been planning for this World Cup draw day for months, and on Friday and Saturday, everything will finally be clear. Julian Nagelsmann will then know which group opponents he needs to prepare his team for in the coming months, and where and when the national team will face its three opponents in the preliminary round.
The DFB delegation is expected in Washington this Thursday. It will be led by President Bernd Neuendorf, Managing Director of Sport Andreas Rettig, Director of Sport Rudi Völler, and the national coach, who is looking forward to Friday’s show at the Kennedy Center “with a tingling sensation in his body.”
For good reason, Nagelsmann has been very reluctant to publicly name his dream group, emphasizing instead that each of the 42 teams that have qualified so far and the six teams still to be determined in the playoffs deserve to be part of this mammoth World Cup in Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Behind closed doors, however, there are precisely these desired scenarios that the DFB would very much like to see drawn on Friday by the four sports legends Tom Brady, Wayne Gretzky, Shaquille O’Neal, and Aaron Judge.
They are not focusing so much on the opponents, although of course a potentially tough group against Colombia, Ivory Coast, and playoff candidate Italy, for example, should be avoided.
However, the probability that the national team will find itself with a feasible, if not grateful, constellation of opponents at the end of the draw ceremony is much greater.
Nagelsmann and his team laid the foundation for this themselves two and a half weeks ago in Leipzig with a convincing 6-0 win in their last World Cup qualifier against Slovakia, which saw them climb to ninth in the world rankings and just make it into the top twelve groups.
The fact that this rules out explosive matches against top nations such as Spain, France, England, Argentina, or Brazil in the preliminary round is undoubtedly a major advantage. And even though Neuendorf understandably called for “a degree of humility” ahead of this draw and diplomatically avoided talking about easy or difficult groups, the fact remains that Despite the extremely bumpy last six months of international matches, any constellation should be a feasible task for Nagelsmann and his team, given that even the eight best third-placed teams qualify for the knockout stage of the last 32 teams.
Even in a supposedly tough group, this must be the goal for the four-time world champions, who were eliminated without fanfare in the preliminary round twice in a row in Russia and Qatar. A third consecutive elimination would be disastrous.
Desired accommodation in the southeastern United States
The big and significant unknowns ahead of the draw are the future venues. Not only for the DFB, but for all participants, this World Cup in three countries is a huge and costly challenge due to the vast distances, different time zones, and climatic conditions.
In months of meticulous work and many trips, a team led by team manager Markus Löw has tried to develop the best possible accommodation solutions for all possible scenarios. And they have found a base camp that Nagelsmann has also visited and apparently appreciated – and to which the DFB has first refusal.
As always before tournaments, the DFB is keeping the exact location of this accommodation a closely guarded secret so as not to give away its knowledge advantage. It is said to be located in the southeastern United States – in a place that is within easy or at least reasonable reach of the venues in Kansas City, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Toronto, Houston, and Dallas. Of the nine groups not already occupied by the three host countries, five would certainly offer the conditions necessary to maintain the desired accommodation. Nagelsmann’s desired formula is therefore: C, E, H, I, or L!
Group G would ruin all plans
In three other groups, the conditions would also be met under certain circumstances, but FIFA would have to play along when selecting the venues there. This is because in those three groups (F, K, J), there is also the threat of trips to Mexico, which Nagelsmann would like to avoid due to the distances involved, but above all because of the climatic conditions. A placement in Group G with venues in Vancouver, Seattle, and Los Angeles would throw all of the DFB’s plans into disarray from the outset.
The exact venues and kick-off times are to be announced in another show on Saturday (6 p.m. CET) following negotiations with the TV rights holders. This will also determine whether Nagelsmann and Völler will continue their logistical preparations in the USA or fly straight back home.
