Europe
(41 teams competing for 4 or 5 berths, host nation Germany also qualifies)
Forty-one teams from Europe were drawn into eight groups on 17 March 2009. These groups were played between August 2009 and August 2010. The group winners advanced to four home-and-away play-offs (held in September 2010), with the winners advancing to the World Cup finals. The four losing teams competed in repechage play-offs the following month to determine a team to play against the third-placed CONCACAF team for the 16th place in the finals.
Unlike previous qualification tournaments, all UEFA member nations were eligible to qualify. In the past, only those nations in the top tier of European nations played in qualification groups.
Read more about this topic: 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Qualification
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Can we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Well then! Wagner was a revolutionary—he fled the Germans.... As an artist one has no home in Europe outside Paris: the délicatesse in all five artistic senses that is presupposed by Wagner’s art, the fingers for nuances, the psychological morbidity are found only in Paris. Nowhere else is this passion in questions of form to be found, this seriousness in mise en scène—which is Parisian seriousness par excellence.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)