World Cup Soccer
The Soccer World Cup (official name: FIFA World Cup) is the most important competition in international soccer. Organised by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's governing body, the World Cup finals tournament is the most widely-viewed and followed sporting event in the world exceeding even the Olympic Games.
The finals tournament is held every four years, but the World Cup competition itself takes place over a three-year period. Teams representing 197 (for the 2006 competition) national soccer assocations compete in regional qualifying tournaments for a place in the finals. The finals tournament now involves 32 national teams (increased from 24 in 1998) competing over a 4-week period in a previously nominated host nation. A recent innovation has allowed more than one country to act as joint hosts. In the past, the host country and current world champions automatically qualified for the next World Cup, but from 2006 on only the hosts will get an automatic berth.
In all 207 nations have competed to qualify to the World Cup, but only eleven have made it to the final match, and of those eleven only seven national teams have actually won. As a consequence of this exclusiveness, the World Cup inspires a great deal of enthusiasm and national pride amongst the tournament's fans.
Six of the seven past world champions have won while playing in their homeland, and nations actively lobby to be selected as World Cup hosts. The only previous winner not to have won on home ground is the otherwise extremely successful Brazil, who famously lost the deciding match when they hosted the 1950 tournament. Even traditionally "weaker" nations have been successful during their spell as hosts, most recently South Korea, who made it to the semifinals while hosting the 2002 World Cup. Both England (1966 World Cup) and France (1998 World Cup) won their only World Cups whilst playing as host nations.
The next soccer World Cup will be held in Germany in 2006.