England drawn against Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia — Federation Internationale de Football Association World Cup

England and Scotland have been drawn in the same group for qualification for the 2018 World Cup in Russian Federation.

England, ranked by Federation Internationale de Football Association as ninth best side in the world were among the top seeds while Slovakia, ranked 15th, were in the second pot.

Group A looks particularly hard, as it contains Netherlands, France, Sweden, Bulgaria, Belarus, and Luxembourg.

Despite winning last year’s World Cup thanks to Mario Gotze’s injury time goal, Germany still need to qualify to be able to defend their title, and Joachim Low’s side have to face Czech Republic, Northern Ireland, Norway, Azerbaijan, San Marino.

There is also a meeting of two former winners in Group G as Spain and Italy were paired along with Albania, Israel, Macedonia and Liechtenstein.

In the South American Zone we already knew which teams were performing but this draw was to determine when they would face each other – in the opening round of fixtures Brazil are away at Chile, Columbia take on Peru, Argentina host Ecuador, Venezuela take on Paraguay and Bolivia are on home soil against Uruguay.

The 52 European countries will be split into seven groups of six teams and two groups of five teams. Games will be played from September 2016 to October 2017.

Roy Hodgson’s Three Lions will have to top the group or finish as one of the eight highest placed runners up to ensure they qualify for the finals in Russian Federation.