TheSportsCampus

With the memories of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa still fresh in one's mind, preparations for the next edition of football's biggest competition has already begun, with the preliminary draw for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to be held on Saturday. The draw will determine the qualifying campaigns for each of the countries still vying to make the final cut for the competition.

Qualifying campaigns will be held seperately in FIFA's six confederations, with football's governing body deciding how many teams from each confederation will make the final 32. Here is a breakdown of the qualifying campaigns for each of the six zones:

Africa

Africa has 5 spots available for direct qualification to World Cup. A preliminary qualifying process cuts down the number of teams attempting to reach Brazil 2014 to 40, after which the countries are divided into ten groups of four each. Teams within a group play fixtures against one another to decide the group winner.

The ten group winners then are drawn to face another in a knockout tie to decide their fates, with the five winners booking a place in the main event.

Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Egypt are the big names in the continent, but with the qualification structure based heavily on a knock-out system, it is tough to predict which of the African teams will make the plane to Brazil.

Asia

Asia has 4.5 spots available to them for qualification, and have a more drawn out out structure. They too, recently finished a preliminary qualification round, which saw 15 teams surviving the cut. The teams that qualified for the previous edition of the World Cup - Australia, Japan, South Korea, North Korea + play-off losers Bahrain have been given byes for the preliminary rounds, meaning that there is a grand total of 20 teams still remaining in the continent.

They will be divided into five groups of four, with the first two sides from each group making the final round of qualification. The 10 remaining teams will again be divided into two groups of five, with the winners and the runners-up from each group qualifying for the World Cup. The third-placed teams from each group will face each other in a knock-out tie, with the winner facing a team from Oceania, CONCACAF or South America in the Intercontinental playoffs. The winner of that tie wins a hard-earned spot in the 2014 finals.

Out of the teams who have received byes, Australia, Japan and South Korea seem to have the greatest chances of qualifying, with the competition expected to be nip and tuck for the remaining two qualifiers.

CONCACAF

The Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football have 3.5 places for the World Cup, for which 30 teams are fighting to stake a claim. These teams go through three qualifying rounds, after which the best six teams get chosen to play a league-based competition. The top three teams from that league make the cut for Brazil, while the fourth-placed team faces a team from one of the other confederations in a knockout tie to earn a chance to compete in the World Cup.

USA and Mexico are the biggest names in this confederation, with the likes of Costa Rica, Honduras and Trinidad & Tobago expected to stake a claim for the remaining places.

Oceania

Oceania has the smallest qualifying structure of all six confederations, with only half a spot given to the region. 11 teams are trimmed down to four, with the best of those final four countries playing an Asian side in an intercontinental playoff.

With Australia now moving to the Asian zone, New Zealand are again expected to comfortably top the region. However, the all-important playoff will be the key for the side that qualifies from this group.

Europe

Europe has the largest number of spots for the competition, with 13 teams from the region guaranteed to take part in the competition. 53 teams are divided into nine groups, eight having six teams and one having five. The nine group winners make the cut for the World Cup, while eight runners-up, chosen according to number of points scored, play each other in a two-legged knockout tie to earn a spot.

France are Europe's 10th ranked team, meaning that they will be second seeds in their group and will provide tough competition to the top seed expected to gain automatic qualification. On the other hand, Norway, quite surprisingly, are one of the nine top ranked teams in the continent, and most second-seeded teams will want to end up in the same group as the Scandanavian country.

South America

4.5 places are given to the South American nations excluding Brazil, who have already qualified as the host nation. In this structure, nine of the continent's best teams play each other in a league-style system. The top four at the end of the campaign make the short trip to Brazil, while the fifth-placed team faces a team from the CONCACAF to progress to the finals of the 2014 World Cup.

Copa America champions Uruguay, and perennial heavyweights Argentina are favourites to make the World Cup finals, with a tough fight expected between the rest of the teams in the hunt.

The draw will take place at 1800 GMT in Rio de Janeiro at the Marina del Gloria.

Photo by 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa