FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa

"2010 World Cup" redirects here. For other competitions of that name, see 2010 World Cup
2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010


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 will take place on 4 December 2009 in Cape Town.

Host selection

Main article: FIFA World Cup House

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:

• Egypt
• Libya / Tunisia (co-hosting)
• Morocco
• South Africa
  

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 Zurich. South Africa was awarded the rights to host the tournament, defeating Morocco and Egypt.

Voting Results
Country	Votes
South Africa	14
Morocco	10
Egypt	0

• 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 on 25 November 2007.

List of qualified teams

The following 32 teams qualified for the final tournament.

AFC (4) Australia Japan Korea DPR Korea Republic CAF (5+1) Algeria Cameroon Côte d'Ivoire Ghana Nigeria South Africa (hosts)

CONCACAF (3) Honduras Mexico United States CONMEBOL (5) Argentina Brazil Chile Paraguay Uruguay OFC (1) New Zealand

UEFA (13) Denmark England France Germany Greece Italy Netherlands Portugal Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Switzerland

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.

Mascot

Zakumi, the mascot of the 2010 FIFA World Cup

The official mascot for the 2010 FIFA World Cup is Zakumi, an anthropomorphised leopard with green hair. His name comes from "ZA", the international abbreviation for South Africa, and "kumi", a word that means "ten" in various African languages.The mascot's colours reflect those of the host nation's playing strip – yellow and green.

Match Ball

The match ball for the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be named the "Jabulani", made by adidas, which is isiZulu for "bringing joy to everyone". The number eleven plays a prominent role in the the new technologically advanced ball, the eleventh World Cup match ball made by the German sports equipment maker, features eleven colors, one for each player on the pitch, as there are eleven official languages in South Africa and eleven tribal communities. Also, the event will start on the eleventh day of June and end on the eleventh day of July.

Venues

In 2005, the organisers released a provisional list of thirteen venues to be used for the World Cup: Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg (two venues), Kimberley, Nelspruit, Orkney, Polokwane/Pietersburg, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria (two venues), and Rustenburg. This was narrowed down to ten venues which were officially announced by FIFA on 17 March 2006