World Cup 2010 qualifying draw in full

England have been drawn against Croatia in the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, just days after Slaven Bilic's side ensured England's failure to make it to next year's European Championship finals.

Wednesday's 3-2 defeat at Wembley was an all-time low for the nation's team and proved to be the end of Steve McClaren's reign as head coach, with the FA sacking him the following morning.

Croatia beat England both home and away during the Euro 2008 qualifiers but Bilic, the Croatia manager, admitted that was the side he least wanted to be paired with again.

"I was saying 'Oh no!' [when I saw the draw]," Bilic said. "Everyone in Croatia was saying 'give us England again' but I wanted to avoid England.

"It is a very, very hard draw because they are by far the best team from the second pot.

"The only team I wanted to avoid was England. We are not afraid of them but they have got a terrific team and brilliant players. They should gel and they are going to gel."

The other teams making up group Six are Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Andorra.

"It's not only England but we have the Ukraine too," Bilic added. "That's a couple of teams who were in the quarter-finals of the last World Cup and both didn't qualify for Euro 2008. They will do anything to get to the World Cup in 2010. It's the most difficult group to be honest."

Northern Ireland face top-seeds Czech Republic as well as Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and San Marino, and their striker Warren Feeney admitted: "The Czech Republic are a real force in the world and Poland are always round about, but we're full of confidence going into it.

"Expectations levels have risen, we were gutted not getting qualification [to Euro 2008] but the whole of Northern Ireland was buzzing at where we finished.

"We always play better against big teams, we've proven at Windsor Park that we can beat anyone, and it doesn't come much bigger than the Czech Republic. Hopefully we can pick up a few things on the road - we're confident."

Fifa announced on Friday that England would not be among the top seeds for today's draw in Durban for the tournament in South Africa after they slipped to 12th in the latest world rankings.

Scotland will face Holland, Norway, FYR Macedonia and Iceland in their five-team group. The Scots were placed in the smallest of the nine European groups, group Nine. The other eight groups all feature six teams.

Alex McLeish's side agonisingly missed out on qualifying for the Euro 2008 finals, with Scotland's last appearance at a major summer tournament came at the 1998 World Cup in France.

John Toshack's Wales side have been pitted against World Cup 2006 semi-finalists Germany in group Four. They also face Russia - the other side who qualified for Euro 2008 ahead of England - as well as Finland, Azerbaijan and Liechtenstein. The Welsh are familiar with Finland, having faced them in Euro 2004 qualifying.

Managerless Republic of Ireland have been drawn in group Eight alongside reigning World champions Italy. They will also face Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro and Cyprus, to whom they suffered an humiliating 5-2 defeat against during their unsuccessful qualifying campaign for Euro 2008.

The nine group winners will progress to South Africa, the best eight runners-up enter two-leg ties, with four going through, and one unfortunate does not even get that chance.

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