No cause for any cut-throat gestures after this draw

LOOKING like he’d recently been laid out by the Co-op, mighty Diego Maradona plucked the sealed ball from Pot Two. It seemed hot on that stage and the great man, by all accounts, had not been well. Done up in black formal wear, set off with a bright yellow bow tie, he had the look of a wise guy recently whacked by Tony Soprano. To make matters worse, some clown in his side view was cracking wise at his expense. ‘He’s always been good with his hands,’ said draw host Gary Lineker, whose cheeky chappie patter no longer seems quite as appealing, now he’s doing it for FIFA’s coin. Maradona held out the ball’s contents for the camera, as instructed. ENGLAND. By then, Gareth Southgate and a team of FA apparatchiks will already have known they had done well. Their group seed options were Belgium and Poland. Maradona delivered the tougher of the two but, hell, it could have been worse. Look at Argentina’s lot and ponder England’s chances had they come out in that.

‘I have the best player in history, that is always a plus,’ said Argentina coach Jorge Sampaoli, no doubt adding to Maradona’s joy on the night. Peaky, a punchline, and now only Argentina’s second-best player. Well, thanks for that. At the last World Cup draw, former FA chairman Greg Dyke as good as conceded defeat in the auditorium, making a cutthroat gesture as England were placed with Italy and Uruguay in Brazil. Not his smartest move but he wasn’t the worst judge. While it would be counterproductive and arrogant to appear too happy — Belgium, after all, have some of the finest talents in Europe, and we know that because the Premier League is home to most of them — undoubtedly, by the end, the air of pessimism around England had begun to lift. The challenge of containing Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard notwithstanding, they had avoided the biggest tournament hitters until the quarter-finals at least, given that one of Group H — Poland, Senegal, Colombia and Japan — await in the second round. Then it’s Germany or Brazil in the quarter-finals, probably, depending on England’s route, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. England have reached the last eight of a tournament once since 2006. If the quarters are par given the opposition, it doesn’t mean a bogey is out of the question. And there is always the possibility that England could lose to World Cup first-timers Panama. Hats 1 Prats 0, as the red tops might have it. All that can be said, however, is that if Southgate could have planned a schedule, it wouldn’t be far removed from this one. What else? Well, while the build-up to the draw has been overshadowed by the steady drip of revelations and accusations swirling around Russia for years, one advantage of having hosts who know how to organise a systematic doping programme is they can get things done. This must have been the most expedient draw in FIFA history. Tight, short preamble and ceremony kept to a relative minimum. Still the hosts would have been happy with their lot, which could not have gone better had they rigged it themselves, as they have most sports events in the last decade. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uruguay might give even an ordinary Russia side a chance, and Luis Suarez would be well advised to keep his teeth to himself in this tournament, with the authorities threatening 15 years imprisonment for acts of hooliganism. At least in Brazil he was allowed to go home.