Archive for the 'Asia' Category

The FIFA Organising Committee approved today the procedure for the Final Draw of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™, which will be held in Cape Town on Friday 4 December. The seeding was based on the October 2009 FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking (which you can see by clicking on the link to the right), and Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Argentina and England are therefore the seven squads that join hosts South Africa as seeded teams for the Final Draw.

The committee also approved the composition of the other pots as well as the procedure for the final draw:

• Pot 2 will be composed of teams from Asia (Australia, Japan, Korea DPR, Korea Republic), North, Central America and the Caribbean (Honduras, Mexico, USA) and Oceania (New Zealand)

• Pot 3 will include teams from Africa (Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria) and South America (Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay)

• Pot 4 will have the remaining European teams (Denmark, France, Greece, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland)

• hosts South Africa will be automatically positioned as A1; the other seeded teams will be drawn into the other groups B-H, but will always be in position “1” of their group

• groups will be drawn from A to H and the positions in the group will be drawn for Pots 2 to 4

• geographical criteria will also be respected, meaning that no two teams from the same confederation will be drawn in the same group (except European teams, where a maximum of two will be in a group). For example, South Africa cannot play the African teams from Pot 3 and Argentina and Brazil cannot be drawn against the three remaining South American teams.

The competition that began in front of 60 supporters on the Pacific island of Samoa on 25 August 2007 was wrapped up early on Thursday morning (CET) in Montevideo, when Uruguay completed the line-up of teams that will compete at the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™. As always, the lengthiest football tournament in the world offered up a wealth of facts and figures.

No fewer than 853 matches were played across the six confederations to determine which 31 of the 200 participating countries (more than ever before) would vie for world football’s crown alongside hosts South Africa next year.

There was an encouraging growth in attendance figures. Some 20 million fans – an average of almost 23,000 per match – flocked to the stadiums, creating a new attendance record in the history of the FIFA World Cup™ preliminary competition.

However, there was a downward trend in the number of goals scored, with the total of 2,344 – or 2.75 per match – representing the lowest average since the preliminary competition for the finals in Italy in 1990.

2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying draw for Asia
Top two from each group go through to fourth round of qualifying, where the 10 teams are drawn into two groups of five. The winners and runners up of each group qualify for World Cup 2010, while the two third placed teams playoff against each other to earn the right to playoff against (and probably beat) a team from Oceania (probably New Zealand) for a World Cup spot.

2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying draw for CONCACAF
The 12 winners of these ties get drawn into three groups of four. The top two from each group advance to a final six team round robin. From there, the top three teams get World Cup glory, with the fourth place team facing a scary playoff against a South American team.

2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying draw for Africa
The 12 group winners and eight best runners-up go through to a second group stage, where the 20 teams are placed into five groups of four. The five group winners go to the finals. African teams have to work hard to qualify.

2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying draw for Europe
All 53 UEFA member associations entered the draw for the FIFA World Cup. There are eight groups of six teams and one of five, with each side playing home and away against the others in the section. The nine group winners will advance to the 2010 finals in South Africa, while the eight best runners-up will contest four play-off matches to determine Europe’s other four finalists.