Still had to win it, and are regulars at World Cups.

Switzerland are actually a pretty decent international team.

They consistently do ok and so their ranking ended up being quite good.

France being really crap is the reason they were drawn against Spain.

France being really crap is the reason they were drawn against Spain.

-------------------------------------

France haven't helped themselves since reaching the WC final in 2006.

Terrible performance in Euro 2008 - finishing bottom of their group.
Struggling to qualify for WC 2010 - needing a contentious handball goal in the play-offs to go through.
Failing to qualify from their group in the WC 2010 finals.

Belgium will have been 3rd seeds in their group because they haven't even qualified for a tournament since WC 2002.

Barf, exactly.

Think the OP has looked and seen that Switzerland aren't the most fashionable of names and Belgium having a squad that has only started to impress recently and assumes it's a fix.

They consistently do ok..........stretching it Darren.

I was actually hoping yous would look at the rest of the teams in the Group.....Iceland are in 2nd place for instance.
Tell me you're now gonna make a case for them.

If you read my post you'll see that I was actually asking fro the detail of how that Group came into existence.

Mainly because i'm too lazy to do it myself.

Not really stretching it, over the last few years that's what they've done.

They weren't even the top ranked team in that group, Norway and Slovenia were.

Iceland were ranked the lowest and might qualify. So while it's the strongest of groups, I think you're underestimating that non-fashionable nations fluctuate as much traditional nations do, hence why the seeding process always looks completely different from the last qualifiers.

And of course there is the luck of the draw. These were the seeding pots and the world rankings at the time of the draw:

Pot 1
Spain (1), Netherlands (2), Germany (3), England (6), Portugal (7), Italy (8), Croatia (9), Norway (12), Greece (13)

Pot 2
France (15), Montenegro (17), Russia (18), Sweden (19), Denmark (21), Slovenia (22), Turkey (24), Serbia (27), Slovakia (29)

Pot 3
Switzerland (30), Israel (32), Republic of Ireland (33), Belgium (37), Czech Republic (38), Bosnia and Herzegovina (41), Belarus (42), Ukraine (45), Hungary (47).

Swap around some of the stronger sides in that draw and it all looks completely different.

The Swiss were fortunate to get a favourable draw on paper but are by no means a rubbish team when I'd say they are probably better than quite a few of the teams in pot two.

"They weren't even the top ranked team in that group, Norway and Slovenia were."

Exactly, Daz.
Stay with me now.....
.....if you're a team sitting in Pot 3.
.....what are the odds of you drawing the worst team in Pot 1 - Norway....AND... the worst team in Pot 2 - Slovenia ?
Ladbrokes, Betfred..anybody..Victor, Victor, Victor.

Even if technically, (rankings wise), other teams are supposed to be behind them......
.......these are the teams you would PICK.

Its no surprise that, in the middle of the worst recession in living memory.. the next two world cups are awarded to Russia and Qatar......plenty of cash.

You always get a couple of groups like this.

Look at Bosnia. Their group is just as easy and they were drawn against the worst ranked sides from the those seeds. There are so many European sides that you often get groups where that's not a heavyweight in there.

Hardly a conspiracy.

Bar France, who in pot 2 would have changed your mind, OP? I am sure you would have called any of them easy. Slovenia are not the worst in that pot, and indeed Norway were higher ranked than Greece. Basically in that group you have a low ranked pot 1 team, a mid ranked pot 2 team and the top ranked pot 3 team.

It's a conspiracy I tell you, DJ.

Bosnia paid them off as well.