As the host nation, South Africa qualifies automatically for the tournament. However, South Africa did participate in World Cup qualifiers because the CAF qualifiers also serve as the qualifying tournament for the 2010 African Cup of Nations. They were the first host since 1934 to participate in preliminary qualifying. As happened in the previous tournament, the defending champions were not given an automatic berth, and Italy had to participate in qualification.

The qualification draw for the 2010 World Cup was held in Durban, South Africa, on 25 November 2007.

[edit] List of qualified teams

The following 32 teams qualified for the final tournament.

AFC (4)  Australia  Japan  Korea DPR  Korea Republic CAF (5+1)  Algeria  Cameroon  Côte d'Ivoire  Ghana  Nigeria  South Africa (hosts)

CONCACAF (3)  Honduras  Mexico  United States CONMEBOL (5)  Argentina  Brazil  Chile  Paraguay  Uruguay OFC (1)  New Zealand

UEFA (13)  Denmark  England  France  Germany  Greece  Italy  Netherlands  Portugal  Serbia  Slovakia  Slovenia  Spain  Switzerland

Qualified countries in green

This is the first World Cup with no debutant associations, although two of the qualifiers (Slovakia and Serbia) have previously appeared only as parts of former competing nations. In both cases FIFA considers these teams to have retained the earlier nations' records.