From 12 June 2014 until 13 July 2014, 32 countries from all over the globe will compete in Brazil for the World Cup Soccer 2014.
But which countries are qualified for this biggest team event in the world? Below you will find an overview of the qualified countries for the World Cup 2014 in Brazil.
Europe
53 countries in Europe competed in 9 different groups for qualification for the World Championship. The 9 group winners, which were Belgium, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, England and current champion Spain, qualified directly for the most prestigious soccer tournament in the world. The 8 best runner ups in the 9 groups played knock-out play offs and via these matches France, Portugal, Greece and Croatia qualified.
South America
Brazil is the host of the World Cup 2014 and was qualified for the tournament without having to play any qualification matches. The remaining 9 member countries of the South American zone played a competition against each other and the top 4 countries qualified for the World Championship soccer, which were Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Ecuador. The fifth team in the ranking, Uruguay, played play offs matches against Jordan and progressed to the World Cup by winning this intercontinental play off.
Africa
52 countries on the African continent competed for 5 spots at the World Cup in Brazil. Africa has quite a complex qualification structure, but during the last phase of the qualification, 10 countries are competing during a time period of a month for the 5 places at the world tournament. These places were claimed by Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana and Algeria.
Central- and North America
Just like the qualification in the African zone, the 35 competing countries in the Central- and North American zone need to go through a number of rounds, before the last phase of the qualification takes place. In this last phase, 6 teams compete for 3 spots at the World Cup. The top 3 that qualified directly were Honduras, United States and Costa Rica. Mexico, being 4th in the ranking, qualified via intercontinental play offs against New Zealand.
Asia
In Asia, there were 43 countries that were competing for qualification for the World Cup 2014. Round Four, the last phase of direct qualification, sees 10 teams being divided in two groups of 5 playing each other in home- and away games. The group winners and runner ups, Australia, Iran, Japan and South Korea qualified directly. The third ranked teams in the groups played each other for a play off spot against the fifth ranked team in the South American qualification series, which Jordan lost against Uruguay.
Oceania
This zone is the weakest zone and therefore, there is no direct qualification for the World Cup possible. The champion in this zone needs to play the fourth ranked team in the Central- and North American zone. New Zealand was the best country in the Oceania zone, but they lost their intercontinental play off matches against Mexico, which means that there is no country representing Oceania at the World Cup 2014 in Brazil.
