What do you think of this?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/06/03/upshot/world-cup-draw-simulation.html"FIFA seeded eight top teams and drew them to separate groups, but after that, geography, not skill, dictated the rest: teams from the same continent cannot be drawn into the same group, with the exception of European teams – a maximum of two of them per group is allowed.
For instance, Brazil, given automatic elite status as the host country, had an equal chance of drawing the United States (ranked No. 13 at the time) as drawing Honduras (ranked No. 34) simply because both teams are from North America. Or Spain could just as likely have drawn Ghana as Cameroon (No. 59 at the time, lowest in the tournament). Ultimately, this method produces groups with a huge variance in strength, and this year’s tournament is no different.
What if there were a better way?
Julien Guyon, a French mathematician, has come up with a method of drawing World Cup teams that produces more balanced groups. In the table above, we’ve made an interactive version of his method along with FIFA‘s so you can see for yourself. The Guyon method isn’t better every single time, but on average, the groups are much more balanced.
The Guyon method differs from FIFA’s in a very simple way: All the teams are seeded, according to their world ranking, 1 through 32. The teams are then assigned groups in a manner similar to any other large tournament, like the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, with an attempt to group higher-rated teams with lower-rated ones."