Lionel Messi (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

The Club World Cup draw, scheduled for Thursday in Miami, will see Manchester City and Real Madrid placed in the top-ranked pot. Lionel Messi‘s Inter Miami will be in the lowest-ranked pot.
FIFA confirmed the draw procedures on Tuesday for the expanded tournament, which will run from June 15 to July 13 next year in the United States.
Pot 1 also includes European powerhouses Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. It also features four top South American teams: Flamengo, Palmeiras, River Plate, and Fluminense.
Inter Miami, who qualified despite an early exit from the MLS Cup playoffs, is in Pot 4 with the Seattle Sounders.
FIFA said the 32 qualified teams had been allocated positions in four pots for the draw to ‘ensure competitive balance and geographical diversity.’
Pot 1 comprises the highest-ranked European and South American teams. Pot 2 contains the remaining European qualifiers.
Pot 3 includes Neymar’s Al Hilal, one of Asia’s two top-ranked qualifiers. It also features the two highest-ranked teams from Africa, the North, Central America and Caribbean confederation, and two more South American teams.
Twelve European teams have qualified for the tournament. These include Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Porto, Atletico Madrid, Benfica, Juventus, and Salzburg.
Draw rules stipulate that each of the eight groups will have two European teams. No other confederation can have more than one team in the same group.
Miami and Seattle have been pre-assigned to the fourth position in Groups A and B, respectively, ahead of the draw.
Messi’s team will play the tournament’s opening game at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
The Sounders will open their tournament at Lumen Field in Seattle.