What is the best and worst case scenario for USMNT in 2022 World Cup group draw?

The 2022 World Cup draw takes place on Friday in Doha, Qatar (ProSoccerTalk will be live at 12pm ET on NBC Sports’ YouTube channel to analyze the draw as it happens) and barring a catastrophic collapse in Costa Rica, the USMNT will be in Pot 2 and ready to roll.

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After a 3,123 day wait since the last time they qualified for a World Cup tournament, the U.S. men’s national team is almost there.

And with only a handful of teams yet to book their spot at the 2022 World Cup, the pots for the draw are almost finalized. That means we can start to think about the best and worst case scenarios for the USA.

Providing they do seal qualification against Costa Rica (which is 99 percent expected), then Gregg Berhalter’s side will be in Pot 2. For everyone who says your FIFA world ranking doesn’t matter. Well, this is why it matters. Berhalter would not want to be in Pot 3 for this draw. Nope.

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And as a quick reminder, for the group stage draw the 4 pots of eight teams are based on the FIFA world ranking released on March 31, 2022 and will work like this:

Pot 1 = Hosts Qatar plus the top seven ranked teams who have qualifiedPot 2 = Teams ranked 8-15 of the qualified teamsPot 3 = Teams ranked 16-23 of the qualified teamsPot 4 = Teams ranked 24-28 of the qualified teams + three placeholders for intercontinental playoff winners, plus the winner of Wales vs Scotland/Ukraine playoff

Note: Teams from the same confederation cannot be paired together, except for UEFA where two teams can be in the same group.

Bearing all of that in mind, below is a look at some of the scenarios for the USMNT.

Based on their current FIFA ranking, here is the best case scenario for