FIFA – Zurich: South Africa will host the 2010 FIFA World CupTM, 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 CupTM 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 CupTM and accorded Africa the right to host the 2010 FIFA World CupTM. FIFA’s flagship event will be held in South America in 2014.