The draw took place on 6 December 2013 at the Costa do Sauípe resort in Bahia, during which the teams were drawn by various past World Cup-winning players.[20][21] Hosted by TV presentators Fernanda Lima and Tadeu Schmidt and conducted by the FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke, the draw featured football celebrities from all FIFA World Cup champion countries such as Cafu (Brazil), Fabio Cannavaro (Italy), Lothar Matthäus (Germany), Zinédine Zidane (France), Mario Alberto Kempes (Argentina), Fernando Hierro (Spain), Geoff Hurst (England) and Alcides Ghiggia (Uruguay).
The 32 participating teams were drawn into eight groups. In preparation for this, the teams were organised into four pots with the seven highest-ranked teams joining host nation Brazil in the seeded pot.[22] As with the previous tournaments, FIFA aimed to create groups which maximised geographic separation and therefore the unseeded teams were arranged into pots based on geographic considerations.[23][24] Under the draw procedure, one randomly drawn team – Italy – was firstly relocated from Pot 4 to Pot 2 to create four equal pots of eight teams.[25]
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