South Korea and Japan are automatically seeded as joint hosts, as are France, the champions. The other four countries are Argentina, Italy, Brazil and Germany, which has struggled to make an impact in world soccer in recent seasons. The World Cup finals draw takes place on Saturday.

England, Croatia, Portugal and Nigeria were considered to be in the reckoning for the eighth seeding, but Spain's recent performances and current ranking from FIFA, the sport's world governing body, gave them the edge.

Spain are regularly touted as outsiders to win international tournaments but regularly under-perform.

They have reached the finals for a seventh successive time but can only point to two quarterfinals spots as major achievements in that run -- in Mexico in 1986 and the United States in 1994.

But in qualifying for the 2002 tournament, they won six and drew two of their eight matches and scored 21 goals while letting in just four.

Germany and Brazil were also awarded the prestigious seeded status despite both having difficulties in qualifying.

Brazil grabbed the last automatic qualifying spot in their group, and Germany had to take part in a two-legged playoff against Ukraine after coming second in their group behind England

Germany suffered their worst performance at a major finals when they went out of Euro 2000 after the group stage.

The Germans have won the World Cup three times, however, and reached the quarterfinals of the last World Cup in France in 1998.

"It's not really a surprise. I feel we deserved to be seeded," Germany coach Rudi Voeller said. "I'm glad we are because it is an advantage but it is no guarantee that we will not get a tough group."

But both have appeared in every World Cup Finals tournament they have entered and Brazil has won the competition four times while Germany have been World Champions three times.

Mexico misses out

FIFA general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen said the organizing committee had based the seeding decision on performances in the last three World Cup finals of 1990, 1994 and 1998.

More points were allocated for France '98 than Italia '90, with a descending ratio of 3 to one. They also took into account the positions of the teams in the FIFA world rankings at the end of 1999, 2000 and the current standings.

"According to those calculations, and not including the performances of France, Japan and Korea, Brazil have 62 points, Argentina 56, Italy 56, Germany 54 and Spain 45," he said.

"Mexico followed with 42 points, then England on 41 and Croatia on 37. It was on that basis that the seedings were done."

The draw, scheduled to take place in Pusan on Saturday starting at 1000 GMT will have two built-in safeguards.

The first means that no more than two European teams will play in the same group and that, for example, all the South American teams will not be based in either Japan or South Korea -- they will be evenly spread between the two.

Zen-Ruffinen also said that teams that met in the qualifying competition could meet each other in the finals.

"The draw is open, apart from the restrictions we have described," he said.

"Once the eight seeded nations are allocated into each group, eight European nations will be drawn and placed in each group from A to H. The three remaining European teams will then be drawn and placed in a group which does not already contain two other European teams."

The draw will be conducted along the following lines:

-- Pot 1: Seeds: France, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Spain

-- Pot 2: The 11 remaining European teams: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey

-- Pot 3: Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, China, Saudi Arabia

-- Pot 4: Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Costa Rica, Mexico, United States.

The committee also confirmed that China would play their first round matches in South Korea.