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(PRWEB) January 1, 2006 -- The 2006 Football World Cup (officially titled 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany™) finals are scheduled to take place in Germany between 9 June and 9 July 2006. Qualification for the tournament is now almost complete, with 27 of the 32 competing teams confirmed.

Controversy
The decision to award the highly prestigious event to Germany was controversial, as it was widely expected that the tournament would take place in South Africa. The final tally was 12 votes to 11 in favour of Germany. The New Zealand FIFA member, Charles Dempsey, who was instructed to vote for South Africa by the Oceania Football Confederation, abstained from voting at the last minute. If he had voted for the Africans, the tally would have been 12:12, giving the decision to FIFA President Sepp Blatter; it was widely believed then that Blatter would have voted for South Africa. There has been much speculation since the vote of 2000 as to why Dempsey pulled out; there were reports of threats and bribes, involving the German satirial magazine Titanic.

South Africa has instead been chosen as the host of the 2010 World Cup. Since the announcement of the 2006 award was made, FIFA has made public its intention to henceforth rotate the hosting of the event between its constituent confederations.

Venues
A total of 12 German cities have been selected to host the World Cup final tournament:
Berlin Olympiastadion
Dortmund Westfalenstadion
Frankfurt Waldstadion
Gelsenkirchen Veltins-Arena
Hamburg AOL Arena
Hanover (Hannover) AWD-Arena
Kaiserslautern Fritz-Walter-Stadion
Cologne (Köln) RheinEnergieStadion
Leipzig Zentralstadion FC Sachsen
Munich (München) Allianz Arena
Nuremberg (Nürnberg) Frankenstadion
Stuttgart Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion
The effective capacity of some of the stadia in the World Cup, in particular the Westfalenstadion, will be lower than the figures quoted, as the Bundesliga regulations allow for terracing in stadia but the FIFA rules do not, and hence seating will have to be installed in the terraced areas for the World Cup thus reducing the capacity somewhat.
Also, during the World Cup proper, many of the stadiums will be officially known by different names, as FIFA prohibits sponsorship of stadium names. For example, Allianz Arena will be known during the competition as "FIFA WM-Stadion München" (FIFA World Cup Stadium Munich), while Veltins-Arena will revert to its original name of "Arena AufSchalke".

It is perhaps noteworthy that of the twelve hosting cities, all but one (Leipzig) are in what was West Germany.

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