by Jimmy Nightingale

Created on: May 12, 2010   Last Updated: June 16, 2010

Break out the vuvuzelas, the FIFA World Cup is coming to town.

The FIFA World Cup is arguably the world's biggest sporting showcase.  Since the 1998 World Cup in France, there have been thirty two teams contesting the World Cup Finals, which is held every four years to contest the biggest prize in world football - the FIFA World Cup Trophy.  The last FIFA World Cup, held in Germany, attracted a cumulative television audience of more than 29 billion viewers.  The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be held on the African continent for the first time, in South Africa. 

Before we look at the 2010 FIFA World Cup, a bit of history is worthwhile to provide some context.  The FIFA World Cup has been in existence since 1930.  It arose out of the success of Olympic footballing matches and the then FIFA President, Jules Rimet, was instrumental in getting the first FIFA World Cup up and running.  Uruguay, as world champions at the time, were invited to host the tournament and ended up beating neighbours Argentina 4-2 in front of some 93,000 people in Montevideo.  The trophy handed to the winners was a solid gold statue of Nike, the ancient Greek goddess of Victory, on a blue lapis lazuli base. 

Under the original terms of the competition, the trophy would go to the winners of each four yearly tournament (FIFA did not hold any competitions in 1942 and 1946 because of the Second World War), with the winner of the competition in 1970 to be awarded the trophy in perpetuity.  It was stolen in 1966, later recovered, and awarded to Cup winners Brazil in 1970.  The trophy had been known as the Jules Rimet Trophy since 1946 and was stolen again in 1983.  It has never been recovered.  In simple terms, the FIFA World Cup is a big deal and people will go to any lengths to get their hands on the trophy.

And now we return to the present.  2010 and South Africa.  The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be played in nine venues around South Africa, commencing with the first match between host nation South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg on 11th June and continues until the FIFA World Cup Final, which will be played on 11th July, also in Johannesburg.  The 32 qualifying finalists will play in eight pools of four teams, where each will play a round robin first stage (or group stage) of three matches against the other teams in their pool.  The top two teams in each pool progress to the second stage of the

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