Today, at 14:00 Tbilisi time, the draw for the qualification tournament for the 2023 World Cup is taking place. The 32 teams from our continent will be divided into 8 baskets and will start a year and a half marathon to reveal the top 12 teams, which will receive a ticket to the World Cup from the European continent.
Let us introduce the main principle of the draw, about which FIBA has just made a decision and published it on its website. For the first time in the short history of the World Cup qualifiers, teams are divided into 8 baskets.
Now in more detail: 32 teams were distributed in 8 baskets according to NIKE world rankings. The following teams got into the strongest, first basket: France, Serbia, Spain and Slovenia, and the weakest, in the 8th basket – Slovakia, North Macedonia, Portugal and Sweden. You can see the composition of all the groups below, here we will show the main principle: these 8 baskets are also divided in two and the draw will be held as follows:
Teams from the following seeding baskets have a chance to get together in the group: I, IV, V and VIII. On the other side there are the teams from baskets II, III, VI and VII, respectively. Accordingly, we obtained such a picture:
I Basket: Spain, Slovenia, France, Serbia.
IV Basket: Croatia, Montenegro, Latvia, Ukraine.
V Basket: Finland, Georgia, Belgium, Hungary.
VIII Basket: Slovakia, North Macedonia, Portugal, Sweden.
From these baskets, teams divided according to the draw will fill in odd groups – A, C, E, G.
There are many options, from which our team may fall into such a group: Slovenia, Montenegro, Georgia, Portugal… However, answer to this question will be revealed later today, after the end of the draw.
The seeding baskets left on the other side look like this:
II Basket: Italy, Lithuania, Greece, Germany.
III Basket: Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Turkey.
VI Basket: Great Britain, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Netherlands.
VII Basket: Estonia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Iceland.
Accordingly, these teams will complete groups B, D, F and H.
According to the format, the games in groups will be held in two rounds (home and away), after which the top 3 from each (24 teams in total) will advance to the second round. The principle of the team pairing in the second group stage has not been officially announced by FIBA, although the format will most likely be the previous one: Group A triple + Group B triple, Group C triple + Group D triple, Group E triple + Group F triple, Group G triple + Group H triple.
In the new groups, teams that were previously in the same group will not play each other, the results shown in their meetings will be maintained. Accordingly, each team will have to play 2-2 matches (home and away) with 3 representatives of the other group. Suitably, each team will play 6 matches and eventually the top 3 teams in each group (12 in total) will qualify for the World Cup.
The games will take place during the window period set by FIBA. Both the first and the second group stage have 3-3 windows.
The first stage
Window I: November 22-30, 2021;
Window II: February 21 – March 1, 2022;
Window III: June 27 – July 5, 2022;
The second stage
Window IV: August 22-30, 2022;
Window V: November 7-15, 2022;
Window VI: 20-28 February 2023.
The draw for the 2023 World Cup qualifiers will be held at the FIBA’s Basketball House in Mies, Switzerland. The house is named after the FIBA Secretary General, Patrick Baumann who passed away in 2018. The draw will start at 14:00 Tbilisi time and will be broadcast live on FIBA YouTube channel at the following link:
The next World Cup will be held from August 25 to September 10, 2023 in three countries – Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
