Ukraine challenge looms for Greece

The draw for the European Zone 2010 World Cup qualifying play-offs took place at the home of FIFA in Zurich last week, pairing up Greece and Eastern European giants Ukraine in the two-legged play-off match.

Beaten twice by eventual Group winners Switzerland, Greece had to settle for second place in Group 2 - a disappointment for the side that started out as pool favourites.

The 2004 European champions, who have just one World Cup finals appearance to their name, at USA 1994, will be banking on star striker Theofanis Gekas, the scorer of four goals in a 5-2 defeat of Latvia, to fire them to South Africa 2010.

Gekas was the top scorer in European qualifying and could be the joker in the pack of Otto Rehhagel’s deck of cards.

Ukraine, ranked just six places below the Greeks, staged a late charge in Group 6, beating Croatia to the line thanks in no small part to a 1-0 defeat of England in their penultimate outing.

The eastern Europeans have become play-off regulars, missing out on places at the 1998 and 2002 World Cup finals following two-legged defeats to the Croatians and Germany respectively.

They atoned for those narrow failures four years ago, earning a place at Germany 2006 by beating Greece 2-1 on aggregate, a result they would happy to repeat to give the long-serving Andriy Shevchenko one last crack at a major competition.

The play-offs will be contested on a two-legged, home-and-away basis on 14 and 18 November. Greece will host the first match at OAKA and will travel to Ukraine for the second leg.

The top four nations in the draw were seeded according to the latest edition of the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, published on 16 October.

France (ranked number 9), Portugal (10), Russia (12) and Greece (16) were placed in Pot 1 and were drawn with the teams in Pot 2, Ukraine (22), Republic of Ireland (34), Bosnia Herzegovina (42) and Slovenia (49).

However, the ranking positions of the unseeded teams does not necessarily reflect their current form, as all four nations have claimed the runners-up spots in their groups with impressive and courageous qualifying campaigns, eliminating big-name former FIFA World Cup contenders such as Croatia, Czech Republic and Sweden along the way.

The team scoring more goals on aggregate wins the play-off. If the scores are level on aggregate, away goals count double.

If the teams are level on away goals, or if both matches end goalless, extra-time of two periods of 15 minutes each will be played at the end of the second match.

If the score is level after extra time, penalty kicks will be taken to determine the winner.

The winners of the four play-offs qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.