Euro 2016 draw: England have 50-50 chance of drawing home nation rival due to 'bizarre' Uefa seeding system

As one of the top seeds, Hodgson’s team will avoid favourites in today’s Euro 2016 draw yet can get Wales or the Irish sides

England manager Roy Hodgson (Getty Images)

There should, at the very least, be no need for Greg Dyke to worry on this occasion about being caught off-guard with another cut-throat gesture as England’s Euro 2016 prospects are mapped out at this evening’s tournament draw in Paris.

Having reacted to England being paired with Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica with his now-infamous finger-across-the-throat gaffe at the World Cup 2014 draw in Salvador, the Football Association chairman, and England manager Roy Hodgson, should be able to rest easy as the group stage for the first 24-team European Championship takes shape at Le Palais des Congrès.

England, having earned a place as one of the six top seeds by emerging through the qualification campaign with a 100 per cent winning record, may regard a group alongside Italy, the Czech Republic and Turkey as the toughest possible outcome, but even if that prospect causes the odd sleepless night, the safety net of four third-placed teams from the six groups progressing to the round of 16 knockout stage suggests it will more difficult to fail than succeed at Euro 2016.

The tournament, which opens with France’s first game in Group A at the Stade de France on 10 June and runs until the final at the same venue on 10 July, will be staged across 10 venues to the backdrop of heightened security following last month’s terror attacks in Paris, which saw 130 innocent civilians killed.

While there is a determination for France 2016 to go ahead in defiance of the terrorists, the FA and its counterparts from Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will travel to France having revised their own security arrangements for next summer

But with the focus on Saturday evening on the group stages and subsequent pathway to the final, Hodgson insisted that, despite England’s seeding, there can be no complacency about his team’s hopes of reaching the last 16.

“The beauty is that this good run of form [in qualifying] has put us amongst the top seeds,” Hodgson said. “There were only five places, so it was good to get one of those five.

“To be in that top pool and avoid five other very strong teams is obviously a very big advantage, but of course, in the Euros, even in an expanded Euros like this one, you get a lot of very good teams and you certainly get a lot of teams that are hard to beat.

“Even if you go down to the so-called weakest pool, there are lots of teams in there who are a quite capable of beating the top seeds – witness Ireland against Germany, and that was in a qualifier, not even a friendly.

“This is what we have to confront, but it is still nice to know we will avoid the top seeded teams, at least in the group stage.”

The key aspect for England and the FA, who will be based on the outskirts of Paris in Chantilly next summer, is likely to centre on the size of venues, particularly if paired with Wales, Northern Ireland or the Republic.

Fixtures in the more sizeable stadia in Marseille, Lille or Paris would enable demand for tickets to be satisfied more easily and perhaps reduce the risk of thousands of supporters travelling across the Channel without tickets.

For Uefa, a particularly volatile Russia-Ukraine pairing has been avoided – in the group stage at least – with both nations in pot two, but tournament organisers would shift uncomfortably if the Russians land Turkey from pot four.

With Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic all in pot four, there is a genuine prospect of England facing an all-British Isles clash, although Chris Coleman, who has guided the Welsh to their first major tournament since the 1958 World Cup, is keen to avoid England.

“If I’m honest, I’d prefer it if we didn’t play England,” Coleman said. “That would be viewed as a ‘Battle of Britain’ and there would be a lot of things that go with it that could make it a distraction.

“We will play three games and we don’t want it to all be about one of them.”

Beyond the obvious hazards of a British Isles group rival – Ray Houghton’s winner for the Republic against Bobby Robson’s team in Stuttgart at Euro ’88 remains a painful memory for England – there are other dangerous opponents lurking in pots two, three and four.

Poland, boasting Robert Lewandowski who topped the scoring charts in the qualifiers with 13 goals, would be a threat, as would the Czechs, or a Zlatan Ibrahimovic-inspired Sweden, but the majority of potential opponents should not worry Hodgson and his players.

“In 10 qualifying games we only conceded three goals,” Hodgson said. “Even in friendlies – and we’ve had difficult games against Scotland away, Ireland away, Italy away, Spain away and France and Norway at home – they have not been against anything like weaker opposition, but even then we’ve only conceded three or four goals.

“We’re not an easy team to score past and beat, which is good news for the future. We have some very good quality players in our front six, all of whom could win a game for us, so in terms of the make-up of our team, I think we have reasons for optimism.

“But the Euros are a tough one to win, there are lots of teams out there who look good on paper as well. Which team in the month of June is able to pull it off?”

France, who are likely to be without Karim Benzema next summer following his indefinite suspension by the French Football Federation after being charged over allegations of attempting to blackmail international team-mate Mathieu Valbuena, will be determined to unite a nation in the same manner as Aimé Jacquet’s 1998 World Cup winners by succeeding next summer.

To this end, Les Bleus will play their group games in Paris, Marseille and Lille, a geographical ploy to ensure support from north to south, and there is optimism that Didier Deschamps’ team can overcome the favourites of Germany and Spain.

Whether England can emerge as a contender and progress beyond the quarter-finals for the first time since Euro 96 is another matter, but a favourable draw would give Hodgson’s men no excuses.