2026 World Cup: When cup draws go wrong

The eyes of the sporting world will be on the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, USA on Friday 5 December for the biggest World Cup draw in history.

For the first time ever, 48 teams will compete in next summer’s tournament, which is being hosted by the USA, Mexico and Canada.

England and Scotland will eagerly await news on who their opponents will be in North America, while Wales and Northern Ireland will also have a keen eye on things in case they make it through the play-offs.

But don’t expect it to be a simple process. Teams are seeded – some are super seeded – and there are complicated rules over who can play each other and when. And the whole draw will be dragged out for what feels like the length of the whole tournament itself.

So there’s plenty of scope for things to go wrong – and there’s plenty of times where the simple process of pulling names out of a hat has become a farce. BBC Bitesize takes a look at when cup draws go wrong.

The Women’s League Cup draw, 2025-26

You don’t have to go too far back to find a recent example of a draw that didn’t exactly go to plan.

On paper, it might have been a good idea. Take a popular influencer and television presenter and ask her to carry out the draw on social media – a surefire way to connect with younger audiences.

But in reality, the draw for the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the Women’s League Cup sparked huge controversy.

GK Barry and her partner – the Portsmouth midfielder Ella Rutherford – made inappropriate and lewd jokes during the live stream. Barry also pulled a ball out of the bag and dropped it back in, before pulling the ball out again.

Independent adjudicators at the draw verified that the dropped ball was the same one Barry pulled back out again – and that if it had been a different one, the whole draw would have started again.

Champions League draw, 2021-22

While it’s fair to say that Manchester United are not currently the force they were under Sir Alex Ferguson – they’ve not drifted so far as to become completely forgettable.

But in late 2021, the Champions League draw had to be abandoned and completely redone because Uefa technically left the Old Trafford side out.

Back then, the Champions League format had a group stage, followed by knockout matches. The rules for the first knock-out round were simple – teams couldn’t play a team they’d already faced in the group stage and they couldn’t play a team from their own country.

United were drawn to face Villarreal, but having already played them, needed to be paired with another team.

Atletico Madrid were next to be drawn – but a computer software error meant that Manchester United were left off their potential opponent list, so the draw proceeded with United being assigned to Paris Saint-Germain.

Cue uproar. Uefa realised the error and demanded the whole draw be done again. By chance, United were matched up with the Spanish side – with Atletico eventually knocking them out of the competition.

The FA Cup, 1999-00

It’s not the first time that Manchester United have been involved in draw controversy. In the draw for the third round of the FA Cup back in the 1999-00 season, United weren’t drawn out at all – but on this occasion, it was entirely planned.

1999 was a big year for the club – with the Red Devils completing their astonishing league, cup and European treble. That Champions League win over Bayern Munich earned them a place in a brand new tournament – the Fifa Club World Championship.

The inaugural edition of the competition was set to take place in Brazil in January 2000 and teams faced three group games and a potential final. The Football Association were keen for United to take part in the Fifa competition as they felt it would be a boost to their ultimately doomed bid to host the 2006 World Cup.

Manchester United were concerned that the trip to South America would cause huge fixture congestion and asked the FA to consider giving them a bye to a later round of the FA Cup, allowing them as defending champions to skip the traditional January third and fourth rounds.

The FA came back with another idea – for United to skip the entire competition and withdraw from the tournament to play in Brazil. Reluctantly they accepted the offer.

This then led to an imbalance. The third round is traditionally when the teams from English football’s top two tiers enter the competition and with United out – there was now an odd number.

The FA’s solution – a wild card draw to give a lucky loser a second chance in the competition. Controversially, all the teams who were knocked out in the second round were given the chance to re-enter the competition despite concerns over the integrity of the competition by allowing a defeated team to play again.

Third Division side Darlington – beaten 3-1 in the second round by Gillingham – were the fortunate wild card recipients, but were promptly beaten 2-1 by Aston Villa.

1982 World Cup draw

Just as the 2026 World Cup sees a dramatic increase in the number of nations competing, the 1982 World Cup in Spain also saw a leap in participants.

This tournament was the first to see 24 countries take part – the previous competition saw 16 entries.

But with more nations taking part, the main thing it provided Fifa was more opportunities for things to go horribly wrong in the draw.

The seeds for the tournament were European and South America and the rules said that a single group could contain no more than two European nations and just one from South America.

At a technical rehearsal, officials revealed that they would draw teams to be paired with the South American seeds first. But coordinators forgot this rule, and put Belgium and Scotland in the wrong groups, forcing them to be reassigned moments after coming out of the hat.

Actually, on this occasion, there was no hat. Instead, there were huge cages filled with small plastic balls that contained the team’s names – the same cages used to draw the Spanish lottery.

And of course, they stopped working. Half of one ball was released with the other half, crucially containing the actual name of the country, being stuck inside the machine.

Fingers crossed that Fifa don’t suffer as many mistakes with the 2026 World Cup draw and for everyone’s sake, given all anyone cares about is the fixtures – that they manage to get through it in a relatively timely fashion for once.

This article was published in December 2025