World Cup draw: England's route to the final is looking tough

England will be rubbing their hands together upon the completion of the 2022 World Cup draw.

The Three Lions are on a high at the moment having reached only their third World Cup semi-final last time out, before making it all the way to the second major final in their history at Euro 2020.

And they’ll be feeling good about their prospects of continuing that hot streak in Qatar when you consider that they were handed one of the most favourable draws imaginable on Friday night.

While there’s no easy run of fixtures at a World Cup tournament, Gareth Southgate wouldn’t exactly have been banging his head against a wall when he saw the United States and Iran come out the hat.

Then, to round off proceedings, it was confirmed that the final team in England’s group will either be occupied by Wales, Ukraine or Scotland depending on the climatic European qualifier.

But let’s look beyond the group stages now because the beauty of the World Cup draw is that the simplicity of the beast means we can start to foresee how each nation’s route to the final might pan out.

So, let’s face it, we’d be out of our minds not to go down the rabbit hole of hypothetical results and outcomes to see how England could feasibly make their way to the biggest game in football.

And we’re going to start off by remaining glass-half-full and predicting England’s roadmap to glory in a world where they do indeed finish top of Group B.

From there, we’re keeping our realistic hats on and forecasting how we genuinely think the groups and games around them will pan out to see how their round of 16 clash, quarter-final and so on might genuinely shape up.

Got it? Right then, well, let’s unpack the potential yard sticks in England’s quest to ensure that football is