World cup 2010 news

Here at WorldCupBlog, we like to think of ourselves as more than a blog or football site. It may sound a bit cheesy to talk about a website being a community, but the fact that some of our bloggers, readers and commenters have been with us for years is proof that a community is exactly what it is. We’re constantly trying to think of ways to reach out and interact more with the users of this site, and in that spirit, we’ve worked in the last year to be more integrated with Facebook and Twitter. We’ve also changed our commenting system to have a more community feel.

But a community isn’t just about typing to each other over the web. It’s about fans meeting, sharing a pint, and talking about the sport we love. With that in mind, during this World Cup we’re going to start what we hope will be a long tradition at WorldCupBlog, with three live fan meetups in South Africa.

The details are still a little sketchy. We know that thousands of fans are descending on South Africa for the event, but we have never done this before and we don’t know how many of our regular readers will be in South Africa, and how many want to meet up. We don’t have times and exact places set up yet, but here are the dates and cities we will be meeting up during the tournament:

16 June in Durban : morning before Spain v. Switzerland
21 June in Cape Town : morning before Portuga v. North Korea
28 June in Durban : morning before the Round of 16 match

Right now, we just want to know what level of interest there is in getting together. Those of us who are going to be in South Africa reporting on the World Cup are really excited to meet any fans and readers and get to know some of the people that make the site what it is. We hope that you are interested too.

For those readers that aren’t headed to South Africa, we aren’t forgetting about you either. This is something we are going to be doing more and more, both during the tournament and after. We have bloggers in dozens of cities around the world, and we will be working with them to organize events like this in as many places as we can.

So – the question at this point is – who’s game?

FC Utrecht will play in next year's UEFA Europa League after they completed a thumping 4-1 second-leg victory over 10-man Roda JC in their play-off.