This Sunday in Durban, Africa the preliminary draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup will take place. Thousands of football administrators and journalists will be present and hundreds of millions more watching on television, for an extravaganza designed to show the world Africa can and will host the next World Cup. Such an event will be conducted by FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke, South African President Thabo Mbeki and FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
In many parts of the world such in Asia, Oceania and Africa preliminary matches are underway and a total of 30 teams have already been eliminated. In a continental group the 10 South American nations play each other, matches which have recently began.
The additional 31 teams that will join South Africa in the finals are divided in the following way: 13 from Europe, a further five from Africa, four each from Asia and South America and three from Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation.
It is likely that millions of viewers from 169 different nations will tune the event which starts at 3:00 p.m. British time, as most of the expectation is centred on Europe where the high-raking football titans compete for a spot to participate in the race to win the World Cup. FIFA stated Italy is expected to be the top European seed.
On the other hand, we have Africa with the continent's leading teams of Egypt, Morocco, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Algeria and Tunisia all struggling to earn a place in the first African finals.
On Sunday the first confederation to be drawn is Asia, followed by Concacaf, Europe and lastly Africa. The draw for Oceania has already taken place.
“The latest world rankings which were announced last Friday will be the base for the group seedings", said FIFA.
In addition and for all the scepticism which has been floating around the South African government has admitted the cost of staging the tournament could be up to 500 million dollars more than previous projections, a rise blamed in large part in rising steel prices. "This government had a budget surplus but a budget surplus cannot just let you spend the money," said Jordaan, a former lawmaker for the ruling African National Congress.
