Fifa World Cup RSA

The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the 19th FIFA World Cup, the premier international football tournament. It is scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 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 are the defending champions. The draw for the finals took place on 4 December 2009 in Cape Town.

Africa was chosen as the host for the 2010 World Cup as part of a new policy to rotate the event among football confederations (which was later abandoned in October 2007). Five African nations placed bids to host the 2010 World Cup: Egypt, Libya / Tunisia (co-hosting), Morocco and South Africa.
Following the decision of the FIFA Executive Committee not to allow co-hosted tournaments, Tunisia withdrew from the bidding process. The committee also decided not to consider Libya's solo bid as it no longer met all the stipulations laid down in the official List of Requirements.
After one round of voting, the winning bid was announced by FIFA president Sepp Blatter at a media conference on 15 May 2004 in Zürich. South Africa was awarded the rights to host the tournament, defeating Morocco and Egypt.

The official mascot for the 2010 FIFA World Cup is Zakumi an anthropomorphised leopard with green hair. His name comes from "ZA", the international abbreviation for South Africa, and "kumi", a word that means "ten" in various African languages. The mascot's colours reflect those of the host nation's playing strip – yellow and green.
Zakumi's birthdate - 16 June - coincides with a day known and celebrated as Youth Day in South Africa and their second group match. The year 1994 marks the first non-racial nationwide elections in South Africa. He will turn 16 in 2010.
The Zakumi's official motto is: "Zakumi's game is Fair Play." The motto was seen in the digital advertisement boards during the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, and it will also appear at the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

The match ball for the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be named the "Jabulani", made by Adidas, which means "bringing joy to everyone" in isiZulu. The number eleven plays a prominent role in the new technologically advanced ball: it is the eleventh World Cup match ball made by the German sports equipment maker; it features eleven colors, one for each player on the pitch; and there are eleven official languages of South Africa. Also, the event will start on the eleventh day of June and end on the eleventh day of July.

This weekend Germans celebrated a resounding win over Argentina at the World Cup in South Africa. On Monday German commentators ponder the young multi-cultural team's success, patriotism and the possible political reverberations. Most conclude that football games like this are about so much more than just sport.
This Saturday Germany played Argentina during the quarter-finals of the World Cup and won with an unexpectedly large margin of 4:0. The team now go on to face Spain in the semi-finals on Wednesday.
Millions of Germans celebrated, including the hundreds of thousands crowded into the so-called "Fan Mile" in central Berlin, an area specially set aside for audiences to watch the games together on giant screens.
On Monday the German media leave no editorial subject uncovered, writing about everything from Chancellor Angela Merkel's trip to South Africa to see the game, which had been criticized as unnecessary and too expensive, to analysis as to how the team achieved such a miraculous score line, to Germany's burgeoning patriotic spirit.