LA Galaxy star Landon Donovan admits the group the USA national team drew will be tough to advance from but said he was excited nonetheless.

The USA were grouped with England, Slovenia and Algeria for next year's World Cup in South Africa and Donovan said it was exciting to be involved in such a brilliant tournament.

"Obviously it's an exciting day for everybody. I found myself pretty nervous as the draw started and the second pot was unveiled," Donovan said.

"I think the idea of playing England is very exciting, especially in our first game. Then we have some work to do in researching Slovenia and Algeria, teams that don't really get a lot of publicity but are clearly very good teams.

"They got through difficult qualifying to get here and got through elimination games to get to the world cup, so it will be very exciting for us."

Donovan said that it would be interesting playing against unknown quantities such as Slovenia and Algeria but admitted they would not take them lightly as they are obviously very capable teams.

"I want to reiterate that when you get to the World Cup these are, in essence, the top 32 teams in the world," he added.

"There might be some debate on that but, for the most part they're the top 32 teams in the world. What you also have to remember is that qualifying is very difficult. Algeria beat a very good Egyptian team that almost beat Brazil in the Confederations Cup. Slovenia had a playoff against Russia and got a result in Russia, which almost nobody does.

"These are very good teams. Clearly the focus for us, not because of who they are but because they are the first game, will be England. After that, you decide you're going to move forward depending on how the other results go and things like that, the tactics you're going to use and stuff like that. I certainly don't overlook them.

"I know on paper it seems like a better draw than we had last time but that all goes out the window when the games start."