PUSAN (South Korea), Nov 28: Germany, who have struggled to make an impact in world soccer in recent seasons, and perennial tournament disappointments Spain have been named among the eight seeds for Saturday’s World Cup finals draw.

The two countries join Argentina, Italy, world champions France, co-hosts South Korea and Japan and four times champions Brazil as the seeds, world governing body FIFA said on Wednesday. The draw takes place at 1000 GMT on Saturday.

The Spanish pipped Mexico to the last spot in the top eight teams, each of which will be placed in a different four-team group in the first round.

Three of the eight spots were automatically filled by France and the two co-hosts. Brazil, Italy, Argentina and Germany took the next four by virtue of their performances over the last 10 years, even if the Germans have suffered a recent slump in form.

Germany suffered their worst performance at a major finals when they went out of Euro 2000 after the group stage and also finished behind England in their World Cup qualifying group, before qualifying via a playoff against Ukraine.

The Germans have won the World Cup three times, however, and reached the quarter-finals of the last World Cup in France in 1998.

Spain have historically failed to live up to expectations at major tournaments.

They have reached the finals for a seventh successive time but can only point to two quarter-finals spots as major achievements in that run - in Mexico in 1986 and the United States in 1994.

FIFA general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen said the organising committee had based the seeding decision on performances in the last three World Cup finals of 1990, 1994 and 1998.

More points were allocated for France’98 than Italia’90 with a descending ratio of 3 to one. They also took into account the positions of the teams in the FIFA world rankings at the end of 1999, 2000 and the current standings.

England had harboured hopes of being seeded ahead of Germany after beating the Germans 5-1 in their qualifying group and finishing ahead of them to qualify automatically for the finals.

Brazil also struggled in their qualifying campaign but they were losing finalists in 1998 and boast a record four World Cup victories.

FIFA’s organising committee also confirmed that China would play their first round matches in South Korea.

The draw will have two built-in safeguards.

The first means that no more than two European teams will play in the same group and that, for example, all the South American teams will be based in either Japan and South Korea and will be as evenly spread as possible between the two co-hosts.

But Zen-Ruffinen said teams that met in the qualifying competition could meet each other in the finals.

The draw will be conducted along the following lines:

Pot 1: Seeds: France, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Spain

Pot 2: The 11 remaining European teams: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey

Pot 3: Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, China, Saudi Arabia

Pot 4: Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Costa Rica, Mexico, United States.—Reuters