World Cup 2010 South Africa

Steven Gerrard is one of England’s 'golden generation' of footballers, a group, including Frank Lampard, John Terry and David Beckham, seen as the country’s best chance of winning a major international tournament for the first time since 1966.

The 29-year-old midfielder has lifted the FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, League Cup and UEFA Cup in his time at Liverpool, where he has become a legend among the Reds fans as their 'Captain Fantastic'. However, the Anfield favourite has yet to taste glory at international level. Having qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ with a near-perfect record of nine wins from ten games, Gerrard is out to put that right.

Here, he talks to FIFA.com about learning from what happened in Germany in 2006, the pressure of taking part in a penalty shoot-out and the competition England will face in the group stage in South Africa.

FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke has pledged to increase the number of World Cup tickets available to South African residents in order to ensure that the summer's finals are sold out.

It is reported that 2.1 million of 2.9 million tickets have been sold for football's showpiece event but FIFA is keen to ensure that the stadia are full to capacity for every game.

Valcke has announced that with overseas supporters not taking up their full allocations, category two and three tickets will be converted to category four seats, which are cheaper and available to South Africans.

"We will increase the number of category four tickets because we cannot have a situation where the World Cup is in South Africa and people cannot see matches," Valcke told the Telegraph. "This will bring less income to FIFA, but we have already brought in the income we need to match the organising committee budget, which is USD 423 million.''

Mandela was part of the delegation that presented South Africa’s bid to the FIFA Executive in 2004 and was present on May 15 2004 when FIFA President, Dr Joseph S Blatter, announced that South Africa had won the bid to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“Who will ever forget the images of him grasping the FIFA World Cup Trophy as they were beamed around the world? It is thanks to Mandela and his comrades that we as South Africans could even dare to dream about hosting the world’s biggest tournament. It is also thanks to him that the world could finally trust us to deliver this event at a worldclass level,” Jordaan said.

The fourth ticket sales phase will kick off on Tuesday, 9 February 2010 at 12.00 (Central European Time). This phase, one of the last chances for fans to make sure that they do not miss out on attending the first FIFA World Cup™ on African soil, will run for 58 days until 7 April 2010. Tickets will be allocated on a “first come, first served, subject to availability” basis. Applications can be made via http://www.fifa.com/2010 or (for South African residents only) at FNB branches.

The third ticketing sales phase for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ was finally concluded today. The 2010 FIFA World Cup Ticketing Centre has ensured that the maximum number of available tickets have been included in the random selection draw for the general public. Extensive validation of the results of the random selection draw process has been conducted in order to ensure the FIFA Sales Regulations have been adhered to.

A total of 1,206,865 tickets have been requested from 192 countries by the general public (excluding those tickets that have been sold through the participating teams to their fans). Of this total, 585,175 tickets were drawn successfully, and 413,072 (70.6 per cent) of those were allocated to South African residents.

After three of five ticketing sales phases for the 2010 Fifa World Cup™ South Africa, over 2-million tickets – two-thirds of the total available – have been sold.

The third ticketing sales phase, which will conclude with a random draw for oversubscribed matches on 1 February, saw a total of 1 206 865 applications received from 192 countries.

Six matches are currently oversubscribed (in all categories), among them the semi-finals and the final. In total, 55 matches are oversubscribed in at least one category.

There was huge interest from South African residents, who accounted for 79 percent of the total applications received (958 381) in this phase. This represents an increase of 24.9 percent in applications from South African residents in the third sales phase when compared to the earlier ticketing stages.

Rumour and speculation is trickling through that ticket sales for the World Cup in June are not going as hoped and that England supporters might get an increased allocation. Surely, if this is true, it just strengthens the England Bid for 2018?

The news comes after several countries announced that they have only sold a fraction of their tickets for the event starting in just over four months.

FIFA is due to announce today the results of the third phase of ticket sales tomorrow and the talk is that they will add an additional phase to allow national associations more time to sell their tickets.

England look set to be one of the best supported nations in South Africa as the Football Association announced recently that members of Englandfans, the official supporters' club, had bought 23,000 of the official allocation of 29,000 available with half of the unsold tickets an allocation to the third-fourth place play-off match, traditionally a match that doesn't sell very quickly.