World Cup 2022 Qualifying Draw

 With 2020 being 2020 I had completely forgotten that this was happening.

The actual result of the draw for the UEFA teams is here:

Group A: Portugal, Serbia, Rep of Ireland, Luxembourg

Group B: Spain, Sweden, Greece, Georgia

Group C: Italy, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, Bulgaria

Group D: France, Ukraine, Finland, Bosnia

Group E: Belgium, Wales, Czech Republic, Belarus

Group F: Denmark, Austria, Scotland, Israel

Group G: Netherlands, Turkey, Norway, Montenegro

Group H: Croatia, Slovakia, Russia, Slovenia

Group I: England, Poland, Hungary, Albania

Group J: Germany, Romania, Iceland, North Macedonia

(Thank you Guardian for being the only news source that had it all in writing.  Dear BBC, some of us care about teams that are not the home nations.)

While this year's ceremony did serve the function of reminding me that the qualifiers were starting (as though international football ever stops any more, in between European Championships qualifiers, the European Championships, European Nations League games, World Cup qualifiers and the World Cup itself), the purpose of the draw to shake the teams up probably failed; several teams will be looking at their draw going "you again?!"

I wanted to see what the draw would look like done straight off the rankings, or straight off the rankings while avoiding prohibited clashes, excessive travel combinations and too many winter country combinations (official FIFA explanation here, significantly clearer Wikipedia explanation here).

I was then going to draw straight from the rankings, considering those rules, and the whole European Nations League finalists have to be in one of groups A-E and have a maximum of 5 teams in their group.

Done completely from the rankings, the draw looks like this:

If the prohibited clash, excessive travel and excessively cold country rules are applied, amazingly, only two sets of teams have to swap.  

The first is Estonia and Kosovo, as otherwise, there are too many "too cold" countries in group E, which already contains Ukraine and Norway.

The second pair that need swapping are San Marino and Gibraltar, as putting Gibraltar into Group G would force Kazakhstan to have too many excessive travel countries, as Iceland are already in there.

If the European Nations League rules are applied, it whips Italy into group D, but only one other knock on effects, Estonia and Kosovo didn't have to swap because Ukraine and Norway are now no longer in the same group.

See, so much less fuss than the FIFA method.