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Welcome To FIFA 2010 World Cup

The FIFA World Cup, also called the Football World Cup, but it does not require pronoun it is simply, the World Cup. It is an international association football competition contested by the men's national teams of the members of Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. Since the first tournament in 1930, the championship has been awarded every four years, except in 1942 and 1946 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).

During the 18 tournaments that have been held, seven nations have won the title. Brazil has won the World Cup a record five times, and they are the only team to have played in every tournament. Italy, the current champions, has won four titles, and Germany is next with three titles. 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 World Cup is the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world, where an estimated 715.1 million people watched the final match of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany. The next World Cup will be held in South Africa, between 11 June and 11 July 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.

Italy, the Current Champion

More About Football

The world's first international football match was a challenge match played in Glasgow in 1872 between Scotland and England, with the first international tournament, the inaugural edition of the British Home Championship, taking place in 1884. At this stage the sport was rarely played outside the United Kingdom. As football began to increase in popularity in other parts of the world at the turn of the century, it was held as a demonstration sport with no medals awarded at the 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympics (however, the IOC has retroactively upgraded their status to official events), and at the 1906 Intercalated Games. After FIFA was founded in 1904, there was an attempt made by FIFA to arrange an international football tournament between nations outside of the Olympic framework in Switzerland in 1906. These were very early days for international football, and the official history of FIFA describes the competition as having been a failure.

The German Football Team