A record 141 nations were divided into qualifying groups at Madison Square Garden during a draw ceremony for the 1994 World Cup soccer preliminary round.
Twenty-two nations will emerge from the two-year qualifying tournament and join the United States and Germany in the World Cup finals, to be played in the United States June 17-July 17, 1994. The American team qualifies automatically as host and Germany qualifies as the defending champion.Most of the attention in the draw came from Europe, which gets 13 places in the finals. England and the Netherlands, two nations with sometimes-violent fans, were drawn into the same group. The newly admitted Baltic republics of Lithuania and Estonia were put into the same group, while Estonia was put into the group headed by Italy.
Also, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were readmitted to international competition after a 53-year absence, while the issue of South Africa was put off for six months.
The executive committee of FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, rejected applications from Ukraine, Georgia and Croatia. It also banned international matches from being played in Yugoslavia because of the political situation and lifted bans on games in Lebanon and Kuwait.