The
2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th
FIFA World Cup, the premier international
football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in
South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the culmination of a qualification process that began in August 2007 and involved 204 of the 208
FIFA national teams. As such, it matches the
2008 Summer Olympics as the sports event with the most competing nations.
This will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation, after South Africa beat Morocco and Egypt in an all-African bidding process. Italy are the defending champions. The draw for the finals took place on 4 December 2009 in Cape Town.
Host selection
Africa was chosen as the host for the 2010 World Cup as part of a new policy to rotate the event between football confederations (which was later abandoned in October 2007). Five African nations placed bids to host the 2010 World Cup:
Following the decision of the FIFA Executive Committee not to allow co-hosted tournaments, Tunisia withdrew from the bidding process. The committee also decided not to consider Libya's solo bid as it no longer met all the stipulations laid down in the official List of Requirements.
After one round of voting, the winning bid was announced by FIFA president Sepp Blatter at a media conference on 15 May 2004 in Zürich. South Africa was awarded the rights to host the tournament, defeating Morocco and Egypt.[1]
- Tunisia withdrew on 8 May 2004 after joint bidding was not allowed
- Libya bid was rejected: bid did not meet the list of requirements and joint bidding was not allowed
Qualification
As the host nation, South Africa qualifies automatically for the tournament. However, South Africa did participate in World Cup qualifiers because the CAF qualifiers also serve as the qualifying tournament for the 2010 African Cup of Nations. They were the first host since 1934 to participate in preliminary qualifying. As happened in the previous tournament, the defending champions were not given an automatic berth, and Italy had to participate in qualification.
The qualification draw for the 2010 World Cup was held in Durban, South Africa, on 25 November 2007.
List of qualified teams
The following 32 teams qualified for the final tournament.
This is the first World Cup with no debutant associations, although two of the qualifiers (Slovakia and Serbia) have previously appeared only as parts of former competing nations. In both cases FIFA considers these teams to have retained the earlier nations' records.
Based on the October 2009 rankings used for the main draw, South Africa at 86 were the lowest ranked team in the tournament
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