2010 FIFA World Cup Soccer - An Event Seeped in Tradition
Football fans around the globe are waiting for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Even though the event still has a lot of time till it commences, the excitement and anticipation is as high as it is for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Over the years, the tournament’s final phase, often called the World Cup Finals, has become the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 tournament final. More people will be watching the 2010 World Cup, of this there is no doubt.
Here is a brief overview of the Soccer World Cup which is rightly called by some ‘the most popular sport in the world’.
The beginning
The FIFA World Cup started in 1928. The first competition, in 1930, consisted of just the final tournament of 13 invited teams. The competition has subsequently expanded to a 2 year qualifying process involving almost 200 teams from all over the world. The issues facing the early World Cup tournaments were the difficulties of intercontinental travel and war. Few South American teams were willing to travel to Europe for the 1934 and 1938 tournaments, with Brazil the only South American team to compete in both. The 1942 and 1946 competitions were canceled due to World War II and its aftermath.
Today, the Soccer World Cup has overcome all these obstacles and developed into a grand event, growing with every passing year.
Some FIFA World Cup trivia
- The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely-viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games.
- In all, 78 nations have qualified at least once for the World Cup Finals. Of these, only eleven have made it to the final match, and only seven have won.
- Brazil is the most successful World Cup team and also the only nation to have participated in every World Cup Finals so far.
- Six of the seven champions have won one of their titles while playing in their own homeland, the exception being Brazil, who lost the deciding match when they hosted the 1950 tournament.
- World Cup Willie, the mascot for the 1966 competition, was the first World Cup mascot, and one of the first mascots to be associated with a major sporting competition.
An overview of the 2006 FIFA World Cup
The 2006 FIFA World Cup was the eighteenth playing of the game. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six populated continents participated in the qualification process which began in September 2003. Thirty-one teams qualified from this process, along with the host nation, Germany, for the finals tournament.
The tournament was won by Italy, their fourth world championship, defeating France 5-3 in a penalty shootout after extra time finished in a 1-1 draw. Germany defeated Portugal 3-1 to finish third.
2010 FIFA World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the nineteenth playing of the game with South Africa hosting the tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010. As the host nation, South Africa qualifies automatically. The preliminary draw for the event was held in Durban, South Africa on November 25, 2007.
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December 27th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Indeed, the tickets for the Cup are extremely requested for the fans around the world. I bought two tickets for the last World Cup myself.
They were for the match between Netherlands and Argentina (0-0). I requested them 8 months before the World Cup began. And I had to wait 4 months to receive the comfirmation.