The only people who are paying attention to this are soccer(football) fans. How does the cup work? How do they choose which teams get to play at the cup?
By the qualification matches, that took part in each continental confederation. Each confederation has a different number of slots for the world cup, the number depends on the FIFA rating of the teams in the confederation - this is why South America has relatively many clubs in the World cup (5 out of 10), while North America has only 3 teams (3 + one play off against the 5th of the CONMEBOL). Europe's UEFA had 13 slots for 53 teams in the qualification - that is why the qualification matches start here right at the end of the European Cup. The hosting countries national team is automatically qualified, just like the former finalists.
At the beginning of the world cup, you have 32 out of 204 teams left.
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_FIFA_World_Cup_qualification"]2010 FIFA World Cup qualification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]
The FIFA Rating depends on how the teams performed in previous qualifications and tournaments.
Until yesterday you had the group stage, of 32 teams in 8 groups, of which the two best teams in each group qualify for the knockout stage.
The next 4 days will see the round of sixteen, followed by the quarter finals, the semi finals and eventually the final and the match for rank three.
You can complain a bit about the fairness in the selection, since a lot of the actual ratios was decided by back room politics, but the teams in the world cup are the best 32 out of 204 teams.