Sport and Cinema.com

Years of planning and wooing in an effort to earn the right to host soccer’s biggest event- the quadrennial World Cup culminated in Zurich today when FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter opened the envelopes to reveal Russia and Qatar as the winners based on a vote of the FIFA Executive Committee.

In what has to be considered a bit of an upset, Russia, which has never hosted the World Cup, with the support of powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (in absentia) and plenty of oil money to finance new stadiums, defeated England and combined bids from Spain/Portugal and Netherlands/Belgium to earn the right to be host for 2018.

 
 
On Sunday evening in Johannesburg’s Soccer City, one of the two greatest footballing nations never to have won the World Cup will be joining that exclusive club of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ as champions alongside Uruguay, Italy, Germany, Brazil, England, Argentina and France. That is correct, since the first tournament in 1930, only seven different nations [...]

Not many experts picked these two to be facing each other at Green Point Stadium in Cape Town Tuesday for the right to advance to the championship match July 11th, but Uruguay and The Netherlands have certainly earned their way to this point.

Clint Eastwood directs this drama, based on a true story, that examines the question – What does Nelson Mandela do after becoming president of South Africa, a nation still racially and economically divided in the wake of apartheid?

As part of its 2010 World Cup coverage and celebrating its thirty year anniversary with its 30 for 30 film series, ESPN debuts on Tuesday a film from Jeff and Michael Zimbalist.

To help promote its biggest marketing campaign for a single event, the American cable television giant will look to illuminating the sport’s stars to draw in viewers.

Here are some of the marquee names that will play throughout ESPN’s 230 hours plus coverage of all 64 matches.

For the first time in soccer’s history, its biggest event, the quadrennial World Cup, will be hosted by an African nation as South Africa will be the site of the 32-nation tournament.

On Friday in Cape Town, South Africa soccer’s governing body, FIFA created the groupings that will provide the basis for the month-long tournament that begins June 11.

*32 Teams

*64 Matches

*48 matches in the first round

*Field gets cut in half with two teams from each group reaching the knockout round.

Earlier this week the last qualifying games in a two-year campaign concluded with the 32 teams now set for next summer’s World Cup in South Africa.

With the grouping to be conducted December 4th, here are the qualifiers by region:

North and Central America and Caribbean: Honduras, Mexico, United States

The world’s greatest sports league, the English Premier League, began its latest campaign began over the weekend as Arsenal slammed Everton 6-1, Tottenham topped Liverpool 2-1, while Chelsea took care of Hull City 2-1 reigning champion Manchester United got into the winning column with a 1-0 victory over Birmingham City in the major games.