Next year's World Cup finals in Germany will come sharply into focus on Saturday (AEDT) when the first round draw takes place live on television before a huge global audience.

The 32 finalists will be split into eight first round groups of four teams with the opening match on June 9 now just six months away.

The only certainty is that Germany will play in that game in Munich after being allocated slot A1 in the draw, while world champions Brazil will be allocated slot F1 and will open their campaign in Berlin on June 13.

Apart from that, the rest is conjecture.

Eight teams: Germany, Brazil, England, Spain, Mexico, France, Argentina and Italy have been seeded and will each be placed in one of the groups.

They will all be hoping to avoid some of the dangerous non-seeded powerhouses including the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, ranked second and third in the world, who pose the biggest threat to the top teams.

The draw takes place at the Neue Messe trade hall in front of nearly 4,000 invited guests, including 31 of the 32 national coaches, in a 90-minute ceremony starting at 2030 local time (1930 GMT). The draw itself will commence at around 2120 (2020 GMT).

The format for the finals will follow the formula used at the first 32-team finals in France eight years ago.

The eight seeds will be allocated to one of the eight four-team first round groups with the others added according to geographical criteria.

No more than two European teams will be in one group while teams from the CONCACAF, African, Asian and South American confederations will also be kept apart.

Among the most intensely interested nations will be those competing for the first time, including four from Africa - Ghana, Ivory Coast, Angola and Togo. Ukraine and Trinidad & Tobago are also debutants.

The draw will be televised live to 150 countries and an estimated global audience of around 350 million people.

A number of footballing personalities including Pele are expected to play their part in the draw with German supermodel Heidi Klum among the presenters.

The ceremony, during which the official match ball will also be unveiled, will be compered by FIFA's director of communications Markus Siegler.

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