Host nation
of 2010 FIFA World Cup - South Africa
 Zurich,
15 May 2004 - South Africa will host the 2010 FIFA World
Cup, the first in the history of world football’s governing
body to be held in Africa. With 14 votes, South Africa
were declared as winners after the first round of voting.
Morocco received 10 votes, while Egypt did not tally
any.
FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter announced the results
of the vote at a media conference held today, Saturday,
15 May 2004, at the World Trade Center in Zurich in
the presence of high-ranking government officials of
the candidate countries as well as hundreds of media
representatives from all around the world. In a short
address prior to announcing the host nation, Blatter
thanked the five bidders for their excellent work and
stressed: “The winner is Africa. The winner is football.”
Convening on Saturday morning to discuss the applications
for the final time, the FIFA Executive Committee only
had to deliberate over four bids, as prior to the associations’
presentations on 14 May, the FIFA Executive Committee
had once again confirmed that the FIFA Statutes did
not provide for a co-hosting arrangement. This confirmation
led Tunisia to withdraw its bid. Furthermore, during
its final deliberations, the Executive Committee came
to the conclusion that it could no longer consider Libya’s
bid as it did not meet all the stipulations laid down
in the official List of Requirements. The executive
also thanked the Libyan Football Federation for its
work during the bidding procedure.
The result of the vote represents the highlight and
climax of an 18-month procedure that began at the end
of 2002 with the African member associations invited
to declare an interest in hosting the tournament. As
well as the five countries that submitted full bid files
and received visits from the FIFA Inspection Group between
October 2003 and the end of January 2004, Nigeria had
also shown initial interest but decided against following
it up at the end of September 2003.
In 2000, following the dramatic result of the voting
for the host nation of the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ with
Germany prevailing by 12 votes to 11 (with one abstention),
the FIFA Executive Committee decided to introduce a
rotation policy for the FIFA World Cup™ and accorded
Africa the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup™. FIFA’s
flagship event will be held in South America in 2014. |
