Yes, America, there is a sporting event that’s bigger and more popular than the Super Bowl. It’s called the Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup. To the rest of the world, this FIFA event is the only true football championship — the Super Bowl of soccer.
In just about every corner of the globe except the United States, football is the word used to describe what Americans call soccer. It’s a sport so beloved that each of the last World Cup’s 64 matches was viewed on television by an average of 259.9 million people. The 2010 Super Bowl’s estimated viewership of 153 million pales in comparison.
The FIFA World Cup is actually a multi-year tournament. The month-long finals occur every four years and 2010 is a championship year. South Africa is the host country and nine of its largest cities are supplying venues for the various matches, which begin June 11 and end July 11.
Since the last Cup in 2006, soccer teams from around the world have competed in the qualification phase — a series of tournaments that determine the final field of 31 teams. (Thirty-two teams actually compete, but the host country’s team is guaranteed a spot.)
Once the finalists are decided, FIFA divides the competing teams into eight groups of four each. Here’s the breakdown for 2010:
Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, and France
Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, Korea Republic, and Greece
Group C: England, United States, Algeria, and Slovenia
Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, and Ghana
Group E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, and Cameroon
Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, and Slovakia
Group G: Brazil, Korea, Côte d’ Ivoire, and Portugal
Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, and Chile
When the soccer teams that compose these groups converge on South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, they’ll be competing in a multi-layered tournament.
Intra-group competition: The soccer action kicks off June 11 with a nearly two-week long series of matches to determine a winning team and a runner-up team from each group. No one is eliminated from competition until the end of this round. At this point, everyone is just jockeying for position in the next phase of the Cup. Only the top two teams in each group move on to the Round of 16.
Round of 16: The winning team and runner-up team from each group advances to the Round of 16. From June 26 through June 29, each winning team will compete against a runner-up team from a different group. From here on out, competition is said to be at the knockout stage.
Quarter finals: The eight winners from Round 16 will battle it out in the Quarter-final Round July 2 and 3.
Semi-finals: The four Quarter-Final Round winners will play in the Semi-finals July 6 and 7 in Cape Town and Durban.
Third-place playoff: The losers of the quarter-finals will compete for third place on July 10 in Port Elizabeth.
Final match: On July 11 in Johannesburg, the top two teams will vie for the FIFA World Cup title.
Tickets are still on sale for this year’s championship, but they’re being processed on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, contact the FIFA.
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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-basics-of-soccers-world-cup0.html
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