Uruguay Claim 32nd Spot

The World Cup winners in 1930 and 1950 became the last team to qualify for South Africa 2010 thanks to a draw with Costa Rica at the Centenario in Montevideo. Substitute Sebastian Abreu - who plays for Aris Salonika in Greece - put the hosts ahead 70 minutes but Costa Rica equalised when Deportivo Saprissa’s Walter Centeno scored four minutes later.

It’s the first time Uruguay have qualified since 2002: they lost to Australia at this stage in 2006. Their qualification means that we should see Atletico Madrid’s Diego Forlan in action next year.

So there we have it: all 32 qualifiers decided, with the group stage draw to be held in a couple of weeks. We’ll be looking at some of the possible permutations of the draw when the seedings are decided but here’s something to think about: in 1966, England’s group contained France, Mexico and Uruguay, all of whom will be present next year.

Still think we’ll get North Korea though…

Greece join Algeria

A first galf goal by Dimitris Salpingidis of Panathinaikos ensures Euro 2004 winners Greece qualify for South Africa – last appearance was in 1994, you may remember (or chose not to) the face Sr. Maradona pulled when he scored his last goal in the World Cup finals against them…just say no to drugs, kids

Algeria Through

The Desert Foxes (not making this up either) beat Egypt 1-0 with a first half goal from Anthar Yahia of Germany’s VfL Bochum. Last appeared in the finals in Mexico 86, where they drew with Northern Ireland but lost to Spain and Brazil.

Good luck to Ireland, who kick off in Paris in about 15 minutes. If you check out the ‘Latest Tweets’ section, we’ll have updates via Twitter…so you won’t have to log in. If you do, search for 11lions.

Egypt v Algeria: Winner Stays On

As a result of their dramatic 2-0 win on Saturday (the crucial second goal was scored in injury time), Egypt will meet Algeria for a third time on Wednesday in Sudan: whoever wins goes to South Africa. To describe this game as ‘a local rivalry’ is an understatement: the Algerian team bus was attacked at the weekend and both sides ending up blaming each other – the Algerians blamed Egyptians who had been wound up by satellite TV broadcasts (insert Fox News joke here), the Egyptians claimed that it was arranged by local Algerians to make them look bad.

So well done whichever genius at FIFA decided to arrange a playoff between two rivals who can’t stand each other in a country at war with itself governed by a regime that might be described as ‘dodgy at best’.

Naturally, we’ll have the result when it comes in; kick of is 5:30pm GMT.

Advantage: Uruguay

Uruguay won 1-0 in Costa Rica early this morning, arguably giving them a decent advantage for the return leg on Wednesday. Costa Rica were down to ten men for the last 40 minutes or so after Randall Azofeifa was dismissed, but the damage had already been done by Sao Paulo’s Diego Lugano who scored after 21 minutes.

Quick Round Up

New Zealand, Nigeria and Cameroon all joined the list of qualifiers today, whilst Russia, France and Portugal all won the first legs of their UEFA region playoff games. The only stalemate was the goalless draw in Athens between Greece and Ukraine; Costa Rica play Uruguay in the first leg of their playoff at 02:00 GMT on Sunday so we’ll have news of what happened in that one bright and early tomorrow morning. Finally for today, thanks for everyone that joined us for our initial live blog, which got underway a little later than planned – sorry about that!

England Call Up For Beachball?

Probably not…which is a shame. It’s got a really good goalscoring record against one of the top teams in the Premiership.

Anyway, here’s the line up for the UEFA playoffs: all of them kick off at 7pm GMT on Saturday November 14th 2009.

Greece v Ukraine

Ireland v France

Portugal v Bosnia & Herzegovina

Russia v Slovenia

It’s also worth noting that on the Saturday the second leg of the New Zealand/Bahrain  (0-0) playoff kicks off at 7am GMT that Saturday and the first leg of Costa Rica v Uruguay kicks off an hour later than the European games.

Returns legs for the UEFA region are the following Wednesday, winners qualify for the finals. Premiership preview should be up on Thursday.

Updated List Of Qualifiers

Confirmed qualifiers in alphabetical order: Australia, Argentina (yes, they did it – and it wouldn’t have been the same without them), Brazil, Chile, Denmark, England, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, North Korea, Paraguay, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and USA.

In the UEFA playoffs: Bosnia, France, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Central/South America playoff: Costa Rica v Uruguay. You have to feel for Costa Rica: two goals up in the USA only to end up drawing courtesy of an equaliser in the 96th minute.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Premiership preview.

Quick Look Forward To Wednesday

Hello again, it’s a brief one this evening but we’ll have another couple of posts before the weekend with more news from the final round of qualifiers and a Premiership preview.

Our unbeaten run went out of the window at the weekend, but we’re not reading too much into it: if Rio Ferdinand is having a ‘blip’ we’d rather he had it now than next June and imagine how disappointing it would have been if we’d been unbeaten until the first game of the tournament proper.

Saturday was an exciting day, we watched bits of several games and saw both Italy and Argentina snatch last minute goals. It was heartbreak for Ireland who blew their chances of automatic qualification about a minute after the same chances looked so good against the World Champions; Argentina almost made a complete mess of things by letting a terrible Peru side back into their game (played in the middle of rainstorm in a windlashed Buenos Aires) in injury time and then won it the death. Mr. Maradona’s celebration of Martin Palermo’s winner is worth watching if you can find it on Youtube. Next time Manchester United score a ‘late’ winner in a rainstorm I’d love to see Fergie do what Diego did.

Anyway, we now have several more confirmed qualifiers but tomorrow night we’ll have an even more complete picture. Things to look out for in the UEFA region:

* After all the hysteria about Portugal not qualifying, they will probably make the playoffs. Their last game is against Malta. At home. Sweden play Albania, which is no longer a guaranteed three points.

* In Group 2, everything is still wide open and Greece may end up qualifying automatically. Switzerland have fellow contenders Israel at home and the Greeks have to beat Luxembourg.

* Northern Ireland have a very tough task in the Czech Republic, especially as the Czechs also have to win to stand a chance of qualification. It doesn’t help either of them that Slovenia and Slovakia have home games, against Poland and San Marino respectively; look out for the commentators on Northern Ireland’s game using the

* Croatia should probably reach the playoffs with a win over Kazakhstan, but Ukraine face Andorra in arguably the easier game.

Argentina’s win over Peru has made life a lot easier for them, but with Chile qualifying on Saturday night with a win in Colombia, the game between Uruguay and Argentina tomorrow is still absolutely crucial.

So there’s still a lot to look forward to and a lot to play for as the qualifiers sort themselves out: we’ll be issuing updates to the site via our Twitter account until about 11:00pm GMT on Wednesday.

Thanks for reading!

A Big Day Around The World

By the end of the weekend, we’ll probably have a much better idea of who will joining the countries who have already qualified for South Africa, who will be in the play offs and which (if any) of the major footballing powers will be watching England on TV. Here’s a quick guide to the various scenarios that will be played out around the world today:

EUROPE

Group 1: wide open. Denmark have a three point lead at the time of writing this, but they play second place Sweden this evening; Portugal
play Hungary so this situation is very fluid could all change by tomorrow morning.

Group 2: See Group 1. Leaders Switzerland have an easy looking game in Luxembourg, but the key game today is probably Greece v Latvia. If that finishes in a draw and Israel beat bottom place Moldova then there’s a three way tie for second place going into Wednesday’s games.

Group 3: Slovakia have a five point lead, if they draw today they go through but their game is against second place Slovenia, who will be desperate to hang on for a point. Northern Ireland don’t have
a game today but will be keeping a close eye on the Czech Republic v Poland game.

Group 4: either Germany or Russia, they play each other today in Moscow. In an ideal world this one would be the one I’d be watching.

Group 5: Spain are already through, so this is a race for second between Bosnia & Turkey. Bosnia – away in Estonia –  have a four point advantage going into the last two games; Turkey have a tricky looking game in Belgium.

Group 6: Croatia look likely to go to the Play offs as Ukraine must beat England to stand any chance of coming second

Group 7: Serbia are guaranteed a play off place and will win the group if they beat Romania; France could still theoretically win the group,
they’ve got the Faroe Islands this evening in one of those games that France will probably win 1-0 with a goal in the tenth minute of injury time!

Group 8: Italy are already guaranteed a play off place, so Ireland need a
win to stand any chance of autoqualification. If Ireland lose in Dublin and Bulgaria beat Cyprusthen the battle for second place would go to Wednesday night. Breaking news yesterday was Fabio Cannavaro failing a drugs test having taken some kind of cortisone shot for a bee sting; he’s travelled to Dublin with the Italian squad but won’t be allowed to play tonight.

SOUTH AMERICA

Two automatic places and a play off place left. Chile and Ecuador are currently in the automatic places with Argentina in the play off spot. That’s the simple part: Chile should be able to tie up one of the automatic places although they may have to wait until next week (they play
in Colombia this evening), but there are only three points difference between Ecuador (currently fourth) and Colombia (currently eighth), which means that the Colombia/Chile and Ecuador/Uruguay games are likely to have a bigger impact on the remaining automatic places than Argentina v Peru, which is a game that Argentina must (and probably will) win.

Outside Europe and South America…

The Ivory Coast can qualify with a win in Malawi …the first leg of Bahrain/New Zealand qualifier takes place today…if El Salvador beat Mexico tonight and the United States win in Honduras tomorrow morning, the USA will qualify.

In case you’re having trouble keeping track of the important stuff, here’s the timeline we’ll be following so we can attempt (and ‘attempt’ is a very important concept!) to bring you updates on Twitter – all times GMT:

13:00 Malawi v Ivory Coast
15:45 Switzerland v Luxembourg
16:00 Russia v Germany
17:00 Estonia v Bosnia & Herzegovina
17:15 Ukraine v England
18:00 Bulgaria v Cyprus
19:00 Denmark v Sweden
19:30 Serbia v Romania
19:45 Belgium v Turkey
20:00 Israel v Moldova, France v Faroe Islands, Ireland v Italy
20:45 Portugal v Hungary
23:00 Colombia v Chile, Ecuador v Uruguay, Argentina v Brazil, El Salvador v Mexico

It’s a shame that not everyone will be able to watch our game today, but it’s a chance to appreciate our early qualification, to enjoy an exciting day of international football and to look forward to the prospect of South Africa 2010.

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