No France, England or Italy for Malta. Glamour-wise, our draw in the World Cup 2006 qualifying rounds leaves much to be desired as none of Europe's big guns were drawn in Group Eight.

Yet, the draw in Frankfurt yesterday was not entirely gloomy as it spared the Malta FA and national team the prospect of unpleasant trips.

On the contrary, Malta will take on familiar opponents in the World Cup qualifying campaign, namely Sweden, Croatia, Bulgaria, Iceland and Hungary.

The Malta FA delegation at yesterday's draw was made up of president Joe Mifsud, coach Horst Heese and Ivan Vella, the national teams' secretary.

Iceland and Bulgaria were in Malta's qualifying group for the 2002 World Cup finals while Croatia were our opponents in the qualifiers for EURO 2000.

Carmel Busuttil, assistant to Heese, had mixed feelings about the draw.

"It's a difficult group but at the same time, I am quite satisfied to get three teams - Croatia, Bulgaria and Iceland - who we met over the past few years," Busuttil said.

"Knowing beforehand that the countries we shall be visiting have good training and playing facilities should help our players concentrate solely on football matters," Busuttil added.

"As usual, we are the underdogs in this group as the remaining nations are all rated highly in international football. Now that we know the identity of our opponents, the players must work harder during training to make sure that the team are well-equipped to tackle the challenges ahead."

Busuttil was a key member of the Maltese team that played against Croatia, Bulgaria and Iceland. In fact, Malta's home match against Iceland in April, 2001 marked Busuttil's last international appearance.

Sweden and Hungary are also no strangers to the Maltese team. The matches against Hungary will revive fond memories for Busuttil who scored Malta's goals in both home and away games in the qualifying round for the 1990 World Cup.

Malta followed up a 2-2 draw at Ta' Qali with another creditable 1-1 draw in Budapest. In 1997, Malta's results in two friendlies against Hungary were not very encouraging as the team lost 4-1 at home and 3-0 away. Malta's last meeting with Sweden was a friendly at Ta' Qali in 2001, won by the visitors 3 0.

Other previous encounters:

EURO 2000, Group Eight - Malta vs Croatia 1-4; 1-2.

World Cup 2002, Group Three - Malta vs Iceland 1-4, 0-3; vs Bulgaria 0-3, 0-2.

Preliminary round draw - Europe

Group 1
1. Czech Republic
2. Netherlands
3. Romania
4. Finland
5. Macedonia
6. Armenia
7. Andorra

Group 2
1. Turkey
2. Denmark
3. Greece
4. Ukraine
5. Georgia
6. Albania
7. Kazakhstan

Group 3
1. Portugal
2. Russia
3. Slovakia
4. Latvia
5. Estonia
6. Liechtenstein
7. Luxembourg

Group 4
1. France
2. Ireland
3. Switzerland
4. Israel
5. Cyprus
6. Faroe Islands

Group 5
1. Italy
2. Slovenia
3. Scotland
4. Norway
5. Belarus
6. Moldova

Group 6
1. England
2. Poland
3. Austria
4. Wales
5. Northern Ireland
6. Azerbaijan

Group 7
1. Spain
2. Belgium
3. Serbia
4. Bosnia
5. Lithuania
6. San Marino

Group 8
1. Sweden
2. Croatia
3. Bulgaria
4. Iceland
5. Hungary
6. Malta