05 Mar 2018

FIFA and FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia

Posted in Miscellaneous By attemptnwin On March 5, 2018

FIFA World Cup 2018 is around the corner and as usual entire world will focus on the twenty two players in the field trying to control an Adidas Telstar 18 football. The football event will take place this time in Russia from 14 June 2018 to 15 July 2018. FIFA World cup 2018 is the 21st edition of the once in four year event.

FIFA- The organizer of World Cup football

FIFA stands for The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (French) which means International Federation of Association Football. FIFA is the international governing body of associations representing football, futsal, and beach soccer. FIFA has strength of 211 national associations as members. FIFA organizes all major international tournaments. The most famous of the tournaments conducted by them are the Men’s World Cup and Women's World Cup commenced in 1930 and 1991 respectively. More than one tenth of the world population watches the live telecast of men’s World Cup matches, making it the most popular sport event. World Cup is also one of the highly marketed sports events and earns around $1.5 billion in revenue from sponsorships.

The Zurich headquartered FIFA was founded in 1904 to oversee an international competition among eight national associations of Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Presently, the world of football has been divided into six regional confederations by FIFA and they are Africa, Asia, Europe, North & Central America and the Caribbean, Oceania, and South America with national associations becoming members in one of the confederations too.

FIFA is responsible for conducting major international tournaments. However, the responsibility of framing rules of football rests with the International Football Association Board.

World Cup did not happen in 1942 and 1946 as the events were cancelled due to World war-II.

How do countries earn their place in FIFA world cup final round?

The current format of competition involves two phases, qualification phase and world cup finals. The number of teams participating in the world cup final round is 32, at present. Of these teams, the host nation qualifies automatically being hosts. Based on the FIFA Council decision in 2017, 48 teams will participate in world cup final round starting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This will give more opportunity to teams from Asia and Africa.

Qualification phase for the remaining 31 teams takes place over a three year period preceding the mega event. The allocation of slots for each confederation is decided by FIFA Executive Committee. All members of the FIFA (excluding the host nation that qualifies automatically) are eligible to participate in the qualification phase. The six regional confederations conduct a series of matches among their members to decide the qualifiers from their region. The FIFA 2018 witnessed the registration by all member associations for the first time for qualification round.

Which teams participate in the FIFA 2018 World Cup finals?

Following 32 national teams will represent their respective countries in the 21st edition of FIFA World Cup.

Confederation	Team
Africa	Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia
Asia	Australia, Iran, Japan, Korea Republic, Saudi Arabia
Europe	Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Iceland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
North & Central America and the Caribbean	Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama
Oceania	No representation
South America	Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay