FIFA World Cup comes to The USA?

This month is international month at The Future and we look at World Football aka Soccor.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between June 11th and July 11, 2010 in South Africa. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the culmination of a qualification process that began in August 2007 and involved 204 of the 208 FIFA national teams. As such, it matches the 2008 Summer Olympics as the sports event with the most competing nations.

This will be the first time that the tournament has been hosted by an African nation, after South Africa beat Morocco and Egypt in an all-African bidding process. This decision left the Oceania Football Confederation as the only confederation yet to host the FIFA World Cup. Italy is the defending champions. The draw for the finals took place on 4 December 2009 in Cape Town.

The FIFA World Cup, occasionally called the Football World Cup, but usually referred to simply as the World Cup, is an international football competition contested by the men’s national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The championship has been awarded every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not contested because of World War II.

The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of about a month – this phase is often called the World Cup Finals. A qualification phase, which currently takes place over the preceding three years, is used to determine which teams qualify for the tournament together with the host nation(s). The World Cup is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, with an estimated 715.1 million people watching the 2006 final.

During the 18 tournaments that have been held, seven nations have won the title. Brazil is the only team to have played in every tournament and have won the World Cup a record five times. Italy is the current champions and has won four titles, and Germany is next with three. The other former champions are Uruguay, winners of the inaugural tournament and Argentina, with two titles each, and England and France with one title each.

The 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.

The bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups is currently under way. These will be the 21st and 22nd editions of the FIFA World Cup. The bidding procedure to host both the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup began in January 2009, and national associations had until 2 February 2009 to register their interest. The executive committee of FIFA will announce their decision on the two editions in December 2010. Candidates have applied for either or both of the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, but the 2022 hosts will not be chosen from the same continent as the 2018 hosts.

Nine individual nations registered their intention to bid with FIFA by the February 2009 deadline: Australia, England, Indonesia, Japan, Qatar, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Additionally Belgium and the Netherlands registered to bid together, as have Portugal and Spain.[4] Mexico however later withdrew its bid. FIFA confirmed the list of bidders in March, with Indonesia, South Korea and Qatar bidding for 2022 only.

In October 2007, FIFA ended the continental rotation policy. Instead the last two tournament host confederations are ineligible, leaving Africa ineligible for 2018 and South America ineligible for both 2018 and 2022. Other factors in the selection process include the number of suitable stadia, and their location across candidate nations. Due to the number of bids received by FIFA, this World Cup is expected to be the most hotly contested bid ever, mainly due to the revision in FIFA's rotation policy. As a result, Sepp Blatter has said that FIFA may follow the International Olympic Committee and have a preliminary elimination of bids some time before the final ceremony.

18 Official cities of the US World Cup Bid
Atlanta, GA
San Diego, CA
Phoenix, AR
Dallas, TX
Seattle, WA
Denver, CO
Tampa, FL
Indianapolis, IN
Baltimore, MD
Nashville, TN
Kansas City, MO & KS
Houston, TX
Miami, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Los Angeles, CA
Washington D.C.
Boston, MA
New York, NY

GO USA!!!