Can the Super Falcons avoid USA, Germany or even Brazil at Saturday's World Cup draw?

Nigeria's Super Falcons will ahead of the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup draw, sit in Pot 4 according to the October edition of the FIFA Women's ranking.

Nigeria climbed one place to 45th in the world despite losing all three matches to the United States (2-1 and 4-0) and Japan (2-0) in the last two Women’s international windows.

According to FIFA, the October 2022 ranking decides how the seeding for the final draw will be for teams scheduled to play at the tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

The Super Falcons alongside 28 other teams have qualified for the tournament so far:

Co-Hosts: Australia, New Zealand

AFC: China, Japan, Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam 

CAF: Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia

CONCACAF: Canada, Costa Rica, Jamaica, United States CONMEBOL: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia

UEFA: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland

Ahead of the World Cup in July 2023, ten teams will compete for the final three places at an inter-confederation play-off tournament. 

The tournament will be held in New Zealand between 18–23 February 2023. 

These teams are:

The official draw for the World Cup will take place on Saturday, October 22 at the Aotea Centre in Auckland, with proceedings by 7:30 pm local time (7:30 am Nigerian time).

All 32 nations including Nigeria, will be drawn into eight groups of four with one team from each pot completing a group.

Pot 1

Pot 2

Pot 3

Pot 4

Being in Pot 4, it means the Super Falcons can face any teams in Pot 1 - like the United States or even Germany, Pot 2 - like Brazil or perhaps, Netherlands, and Pot 3 - like Vietnam or maybe Colombia.

There will be eight group pots which represent the groups, labelled A to H, where there will be four balls with the group position numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 for each respective group.

The co-hosts have already been assigned to their groups, with New Zealand in position A1 and Australia in position B1.

The remaining six teams in Pot 1 will automatically be drawn into position 1 of each remaining group and the draw will continue with the teams in Pot 2 and work downwards, finishing with the Pot 4 - Nigeria's pot.

After a team is drawn out, a second ball will be drawn to decide which group they are in.

Teams from the same continent will be kept apart - except for European countries, where a maximum of two can be in any one group.

With all African teams all in Pot 4 - including the possibility of two others joining from the inter-continental play-offs, Nigeria have no restrictions to facing any teams in the three other groups.