Scotland World Cup Playoff Sweep

This tool makes it easy to run a sweep for Scotland's World Cup playoff draw. This is a great way to get your colleagues/friends/family excited about Scotland's path to World Cup qualification, and to raise money for charity - such as the Tartan Army Sunshine Appeal.

You can run a sweep with various different numbers of entrants, with the variables used in the sweep dependent on the number of entrants you have. See below for more information on how this works.

To draw a sweep, simply enter the names of the entrants into the box below, with commas in between, and click the button.

How does the sweep work?

At the draw on Friday, we will find out four pieces of information about Scotland's path to qualify for the 2022 World Cup:

  • Who will we play in the semi-final? (6 possibilities)
  • Which seeded team will be in the other semi-final in our path? (5 possibilities)
  • Which unseeded team will be in the other semi-final in our path? (5 possibilities)
  • Will we play at home or away in the final, if we get there? (2 possibilities)

Depending on how many people enter your sweep, different combinations of these variables can be used to produce a sweep with the right number of possible outcomes, as per the table below:

Number of entrants Semi-final opponents Seeded team in other semi Unseeded team in other semi Home/away in final
5
6
10
12
29
58
140
280

What if the number of entrants doesn't match any of these?

You can run a sweep with any number of entrants up to 280. If the number doesn't match any of those in the table above, it just means that it's possible nobody will win. If you're comfortable with that and your entrants are happy, you can go ahead with any number of entrants. You might want to donate all the prize money to charity if nobody wins.

Why are the numbers 29 and 140 instead of 30 and 150?

If you have a keen eye for combinatorics, you might notice that there should be 30 possibilities for our semi-final opponents and other seeded team. Likewise the number of possibilities for our full path should be 150. However for political reasons, FIFA will not allow Russia and Ukraine to be drawn into the same path. This reduces the number of possibilities to 29 and 140, respectively.