Former world champions France, among the early favourites despite their flop at last year's finals, were placed in the same group as Ireland, Switzerland, Israel, Cyprus and the Faroe Islands -- less than a week after being grouped with Switzerland in next year's European Championship finals in Portugal.

The Netherlands were curiously grouped with the Czech Republic after playing them in the qualifiers for Euro 2004 -- and after being grouped with them again at last week's Euro 2004 finals draw in Lisbon.

Italy, who along with France, Spain and England were ranked among the top seeded European nations face a challenge from Slovenia, Scotland, Norway, Belarus and Moldova.

England will face British rivals Wales and Northern Ireland -- and renew hostilities with their old rivals Poland for the fifth time in the qualifiers. Austria and Azerbaijan complete the group.

Spain will face Belgium, Lithuania, San Marino, Serbia & Montenegro and the Serbs' neighbours Bosnia.

Other highlights of the European draw saw old rivals Turkey and Greece placed together while Portugal will meet Russia -- just as they will next summer in Euro 2004.

MIXED FEELINGS

The French are bound to have mixed feelings about what appears to be an easy draw for the 2006 finals in Germany.

As well as facing Ireland for the fifth time in the qualifers, French fans will remember a shock home defeat to Israel which cost the team a place in the 1994 finals and a surprise draw with Cyprus which led to them missing out on the 1990 tournament in Italy.

However, France has avenged those shocks with home and away wins over both countries in the Euro 2004 qualifiers and French coach Jacques Santini said: "Our wish was to avoid two or three big teams, particularly Netherlands, and we did it.

"We will respect every opponent but if we play like we have been lately, we should be OK."

Michel Platini, the former French captain and coach added: "All the strong teams would have liked to have had this group. We know all of our opponents very well and we know we can beat them. There are other groups which are a lot more difficult."

Germany as hosts are the only team directly qualified for the finals which start on June 9, 2006 in Munich and end with the final in Berlin exactly one month later.

Thirty-one other nations will join them through more than the estimated 850 qualifiers which took shape on Friday.

Among them should be champions Brazil who have to go through the South American tournament which groups all the continent's 10 teams.

That marathon competition, which comprises 18 rounds of matches, started in September and with four rounds played Paraguay are the early pace-setters, followed by Argentina and Brazil. The top four qualify automatically for the finals with the fifth placed team meeting the winners of the Oceania group in a two-legged play-off.

The focus of the draw was on the eight European groups which will produce 13 teams for the finals -- the group winners, the two best runners-up and three others from the play-offs between the other six runners-up.

AFRICAN NEIGHBOURS

With South America not part of the draw itself, the other main interest was in Africa where North African neighbours Tunisia and Morocco ended in the same group.

Both countries are also bidding to host the 2010 World Cup finals to be staged in Africa.

Last year's sensations Senegal, who knocked out France and who reached a surprise quarter-final berth in their first finals, look a good bet in a group containing Mali and Zambia.

With a record 197 nations originally entering the World Cup, preliminary qualifiers have already been played in Africa and Asia as well as South America.

Africa will have five finalists, Asia and South America a minimum of four and the North and Central and Caribbean (Concacaf) confederation a minimum of three.

There were some intriguing matches set up elsewhere. China will face Hong Kong in their first round group in Asia while Palestine make their debut in the World Cup with matches against Uzbekistan, Iraq and Taiwan.

American Samoa, who lost 31-0 to Australia -- an all-time record international score -- during the last qualifying competition in 2001, have a chance to at least improve their local standing with a derby against neighbouring Samoa.