The premier international football tournament, 19th FIFA World Cup will be held between 11th June and 11th July this year in South Africa. The qualification process starts on August 2007 and involved 204 teams out of 208 FIFA national teams.
This is the first time an African country has been chosen by FIFA to host this prestigious tournament. Africa was chosen as the host because of the policy to rotate the event among football confederations. But this policy was later abandoned in 2007. During the process to choose the host of the 2010 World Cup five African nations placed their bids. They are Egypt, Libya/Tunisia (co-hosting), Morocco, and South Africa. After Libya/Tunisia withdrew from the bidding process following the decision of the FIFA Executive Committee not to allow co-hosted tournaments, South Africa was awarded the rights to host the tournament, defeating Morocco and Egypt. South Africa got total 14 votes where Morocco got 10 and Egypt 0.
On 17th March 2006, FIFA officially announced the venues used for World Cup 2010, they are: Bloemfontein (Free State Stadium), Cape Town (Cape Town Stadium), Durban (Moses Mabhida Stadium), Johannesburg (two Venues) (Soccer City and Ellis Park Stadium), Kimberley, Nelspruit (Mbombela Stadium), Orkney, Polokwane (Peter Mokaba Stadium), Port Elizabeth (Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium), Pretoria (Loftus Versfeld Stadium) and Rustenburg (Royal Bafokeng Stadium).
Five new stadiums have been built for the tournament, and five of the existing venues are to be upgraded. Construction costs are expected to be R8.4bn.
FIFA selected the following referees to officiate at the World Cup:
AFC:
Khalil Al Ghamdi from Saudi Arabia
Ravshan Irmatov from Uzbekistan
Subkhiddin Mohd Salleh from Malaysia
Yuichi Nishimura from Japan
CAF
Koman Coulibaly from Mali
Jerome Damon from South Africa
Eddy Maillet from Seychelles
CONCACAF
Joel Aguilar from El Salvador
Benito Archundia from Mexico
Carlos Batres from Guatemala
Marco Antonio Rodríguez from Mexico
CONMEBOL
Héctor Baldassi from Argentina
Jorge Larrionda from Uruguay
Pablo Pozo from Chile
Óscar Ruiz from Colombia
Carlos Simon from Brazil
Martín Vázquez from Uruguay
OFC
Michael Hester from New Zealand
Peter O'Leary from New Zealand
UEFA
Olegário Benquerença from Portugal
Massimo Busacca from Switzerland
Frank De Bleeckere from Belgium
Martin Hansson from Sweden
Viktor Kassai from Hungary
Stephane Lannoy from France
Roberto Rosetti from Italy
Wolfgang Stark from Germany
Alberto Undiano Mallenco from Spain
Howard Webb from England
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