The most anticpated sporting event is here again!
The FIFA World Cup™ is the biggest single-event sporting competition in the world and is contested by the senior men's national teams from the 208 Member Associations of FIFA.
The competition has been played every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of the Second World War.
Tournament format
The current format of the tournament involves 32 teams competing for the title at venues within the host nation(s) over a period of one month – this phase is often called the Final Competition. A qualification phase - the Preliminary Competition - 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 preliminary competition for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ sees a total of 204 entries across six continents competing for 31 available spots. For the last FIFA World Cup, 200 teams played a total of 853 matches as 31 teams qualified for South Africa.
Both the preliminary and final competitions act as a massive promotion for the game of football and for the host nation(s) and are therefore wonderful opportunities to help promote values of respect, fair play and discipline to the watching world.
Understandably, the organisation of such an event is a huge task for FIFA and the Local Organising Committee and is therefore one of the main activities of FIFA over a four-year period.
This page is for the World Cup article. I'm putting pics I like around here