World Cup will be won in the air as well as on the pitch

Glenn Moore on how new champions may have to fly 12,000 miles

Cesc Fabregas hoists the World Cup aloft after Spain won the tournament in South Africa in 2010 (AFP)

When Friday's World Cup finals draw in Salvador is completed, Roy Hodgson will first examine who England are playing next summer. He will soon move on, however, to where they are playing.

The 2014 World Cup, even with advances in transport technology, promises to be the most physically demanding since Mexico 1986, and the most logistically complicated since the finals were last held in Brazil in 1950. Much depends on England's placing in the draw.

Each team will end up with a numbered and lettered place. Should England be drawn as D4, and then finish top of qualifying group D before progressing to the final, they will fly more than 12,000 miles while in Brazil. Add in the detour to the United States for two pre-finals friendlies and a training camp (in Miami, to accustom players to the heat and humidity they are likely to experience in Brazil) and England will travel more miles than if they circumnavigated the globe. And that is without considering all the travel on the ground in Brazil, which has congested and inadequate road infrastructure.

Brazil is as big as Europe. From Porto Alegre, the most southern venue, with an average daily temperature of 15C in June, to Manaus, in the Amazon, where the temperature averages 27C, is a journey of 2,000 miles, as far as London to Cyprus. Logically countries should have been grouped in hubs (eg. Fortaleza-Natal-Recife, or Belo Horizonte-Rio-Sao Paulo), as happened at World Cups from 1958 to 1994. That was the original plan. But domestic football politics dictated that Brazil had to play in several regions, and if they were going to have to hit the skies, so would everyone else.

The Football Association, who began their reconnaissance two years ago, have already signed to stay at the five-star Royal Tulip Hotel in a wealthy suburb of Rio, and engaged the military facility at nearby Urca for training. There is a slight possibility they will re-locate should the draw make this impractical, but it is unlikely. The base-camp principle was established under Glenn Hoddle at France '98 and there is logic to it. The FA can fit out a series of rooms in the hotel creating places for the players to relax, for the medical and massage staff to treat them, for the kit men to run the logistics and for Hodgson and his staff to plan the campaign. The same applies to the training base, which will have a practice pitch laid out to Hodgson's specifications. When travelling to matches, the party will only need to take the necessary, not pack and unpack everything every game. The FA will also build a media centre and keep security tight.

Rio has been chosen as it is relatively central, has some of Brazil's best transport links, and, after the experience of the last three World Cups, when England chose an isolated bolt-hole and developed a siege mentality that was reflected on the pitch, offers opportunities to get out of "the bubble". The opportunity to familiarise the players with the city and stadia was one of the main reasons for last year's friendly in Rio.

But while there is logic to being based in one place, it could mean flying in and out of Rio for every match prior to the final. Which means getting through the city's traffic to the airport almost every other day. Should England be D4 in the draw, and go to the final, this will be their travel route: Rio-Manaus-Rio-Recife-Rio-Natal-Rio-Recife-Rio-Salvador -Rio-Sao Paulo-Rio. That is 12 flights taking them 12,746 miles. Even the best-case scenario, being drawn as H1, then coming second in the group, would involve eight flights totalling nearly 3,000 miles.

Add the changes of climate and altitude (Rio is at sea level, Brasilia at 3,000ft) and this will be harder than the 1994 finals in the US. That posed similar challenges but teams had geographical hubs (up to a point), and there was a sophisticated transport network. Not so in Brazil, whose infrastructure was ranked 114th out of 148 countries by the World Economic Forum. Airport rebuilding is running behind schedule and capacity is very limited – creating sky-high prices for fans. Once on the ground it does not get any easier. Traffic accidents are the second most common cause of death in Brazil after homicides, and while the government has been auctioning off road-building projects in an attempt to speed progress this initiative has had mixed success.

The stadia should just about be ready, though this week's tragedy in Sao Paulo highlighted ongoing problems. Then there is the possibility of more of the social unrest which marred last summer's Confederations Cup.

The World Cup finals have experienced problems before but always been completed. Maybe it will be alright on the night, again.

How it will work in Friday's draw?

Fifa will confirm the procedure later this week but it is expected there will be one pot of seeds containing the hosts, Brazil, and the seven highest-seeded nations, and three pots based on geographical considerations.

England will not be seeded, but are likely to be grouped with other European nations. This means they cannot face Italy, the Netherlands or Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal, all of whom would be in the European pot.

However, a surfeit of European qualifiers means France are likely to be drawn in a group headed by a South American team (to avoid having three European teams in one group). This means England could be drawn with Brazil (or Argentina), France and Jurgen Klinsmann's United States. Alternatively they could play Iran, Ecuador and Switzerland, who Roy Hodgson used to manage.

Pot 1 (seeds): Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Belgium, Uruguay, Switzerland.

Pot 2 (Conacaf, Asia): Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, USA, Australia, Iran, Japan, South Korea.

Pot 3 (South America, Africa): Chile, Ecuador, Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, France.

Pot 4 (Europe): Bosnia-Herzogovina, ENGLAND, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, Greece.