Pot 1:
DOOMSDAY SCENARIO: Germany. The three-time champions and three-time runners-up have qualified for every finals since 1968, apart from 1988, when they were hosts. Making it to France will be a formality.
DREAM DRAW: Greece. Under Fernando Santos, the Greeks have an excellent recent record, built on a strong defence and the counter. But with Brazil a swansong for skipper Georgios Karagounis, they may be in transition by September.
Pot 2: DOOMSDAY SCENARIO: Belgium. Scourge of Scotland in 2014 World Cup qualifying, beating us home and away en route to ending 12-year absence from major tournaments, Marc Wilmots' golden generation are only getting better. DREAM DRAW: Hungary. Zoltan Gera will be 35 by the time qualifying starts, and they are heavily reliant on Balazs Dzsudzsak of Dynamo Moscow, the winger who joined Dynamo Moscow for €19m in January 2012.
Pot 3: DOOMSDAY SCENARIO: Serbia. Former Under-19 coach Ljubinko Drulovic inherited a group of players sprinkled at big clubs all over Europe. Branislav Ivanovic and Nemanja Matic are at Chelsea, while Aleksandar Mitrovic, a 19-year-old at Anderlecht, is already in big demand.
DREAM DRAW: Austria. Marko Arnautovic, of Stoke City, and Marc Janko, of Trabzonspor, share star billing but Austria have featured at just one major finals since 2002, and only that was as co-hosts in 2008.
Pot 5: DOOMSDAY SCENARIO: Iceland. Made it all the way from pot six of World Cup qualifying to lose narrowly to Croatia in a play-off. Improving team would represent treacherous opponents from the fifth group of seeds. DREAM DRAW: Moldova. Aside from one stunning 5-2 victory in Podgorica, little in Moldova's recent record gives us cause for concern.
Pot 6: DOOMSDAY SCENARIO: Kazakhstan. Remember Shakhter Karagandy? Celtic fans certainly will. Many of the same players who
racked up a 2-0 lead for the Kazakh champions at half-time during their Champions League play-off round tie also feature for the national team.
DREAM DRAW: Gibraltar. Fifa's newest entrant have played one official tie to date, a 0-0 draw against Slovakia. Former Man United defender Danny Higginbotham is manager and only recognisable name.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article