A total of 205 teams entered the qualification competition, with South Africa, as the host, qualifying for the World Cup automatically.

At the close of entries on 15 March 2007, 204 football associations had entered the preliminary competition: 203 out of the 207 FIFA members at that time (including the host nation, South Africa, as the qualification procedure in Africa also acted as the qualification for the 2010 African Cup of Nations) and the Montenegro team, which later became FIFA's 208th member.

The final number of teams entered breaks the previous record of 199 entrants set during the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Four FIFA members (all from the AFC) failed to register for the tournament by 15 March 2007: Bhutan, Brunei, Laos, and the Philippines.

[citation needed] However, five teams withdrew during qualifying without playing a match: Bhutan, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Guam, and São Tomé and Príncipe.

An initial draw for preliminary qualification (qualifying groups in Oceania, and knockout ties in CAF and AFC) had been announced for Zurich on 28 May 2007, but none was held.

The draw for the main 2010 World Cup qualifying groups was held in Durban, South Africa on 25 November 2007.

The four remaining teams from OFC had also started playing the final stage as a single group, and no draw was needed.

A tiebreaking play-off was contested on 18 November 2009 in Sudan to determine which team would qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with Algeria prevailing 1–0.

(10 teams competing for 4 or 5 berths; a play-off against CONCACAF determined which confederation filled the extra berth) The CONMEBOL qualification process again featured a league system (home and away matches) for a single group of 10 associations, with matches played from October 2007 to October 2009.

The top three (New Caledonia, Fiji, and Vanuatu, respectively) joined New Zealand in a 4-team group, which was also the 2008 OFC Nations Cup, playing home and away.

The winners would play a home-and-away play-off with the fifth-placed Asian nation for a World Cup berth.

As a result, the nine group winners qualified directly, while the best eight of the nine second-placed teams contested home and away play-off matches for the remaining four places.

The incident caused widespread debate on FIFA Fair Play, and how matches should be refereed at the highest level.

The Football Association of Ireland requested a replay on grounds of fairness, but this was denied by FIFA under the Laws of the Game.

[18] There was crowd trouble around two matches between Egypt and Algeria, with the Algerian team bus stoned before the first in Cairo, and reports of Egyptian fans ambushed after the second in Khartoum, Sudan.

[citation needed] In response to the incidents during qualification, and to a match fixing controversy, on 2 December 2009 FIFA called for an extraordinary general meeting of their executive committee.