What is the world's most popular, most watched sporting event and most-recently bagged 1.1 billion individual viewers?

What sporting event has caused wars between countries and also caused wars to totally cease during its telecasts?

What sporting event has directly led to some of its participants getting marked for murder while other participants become overnight multimillionaires?

If you were like most Americans and thought the Olympics, you're not even halfway close. Literally. The answer is soccer's World Cup, which consistently pulls more than twice the worldwide viewership of the Olympic Games.

As the world's most-popular sport, international football (as soccer is called everywhere outside the U.S.) draws huge live and TV audiences to the World Cup where audiences await the crowning of a real world championship trophy.

As with the Olympics, the World Cup is staged once every four years by FIFA, the international body that stages the games in a new host country. 2006 marks the World Cup's return and this time the tournament is slated to be played in Germany throughout the month of June.

But this is where any resemblance to the Olympics ends. Unlike the Olympics, not every country is invited by FIFA to participate the World Cup Finals. All but two of the 107 FIFA member countries must first spend the three preceding years playing qualifying matches in order to make the 32-nation cut that gets invited to the finals. The two teams who need not qualify are the host country, Germany in this case, along with the previous World Cup winner. Brazil returns as the defending world champion from 2002.

And then there is the difference between Olympics viewers and the World Cup audience. Fanatic is too tame a word for international football fans who surprise when they DO NOT riot in the streets.

By now the infamy of English football hooligans is institutionalized. One of the ongoing foreign policy obligations of the British government is to dispatch an army of U.K. police to the World Cup's host country in order to help keep visiting English fans under control.

This violent passion may seem extreme even to hockey-loving Americans. However, even England fans take a back seat to football fans in El Salvador and Honduras, whose team rivalries during the second qualifying round for the 1970 Football World Cup led to a six day war between these two neighboring countries.
And then there is the story of Haitian leader General Raoul Cedras. In 1994 General Cedras warned the United States not to intervene to restore a democratically-elected government in Haiti. Cedras remained defiant, shaking his fists at the threat of an American military invasion. Cedras was afraid of nothing- except Haiti's World Cup fans. When international broadcasters threatened to pull the plug World Cup broadcasts to Haiti over non-payment issues, Cedras' government worked overtime to restore the free broadcasts to Haitian citizens in time for the World Cup final in July of that year. Defying the American military is easy; facing an angry mob of Haitians denied World Cup telecasts is too much even for a Third-World dictator.

On a more personal scale, the triumphs and tragedies of the World Cup are no less poignant. Every World Cup produces one or two breakout performances like that of English striker Michael Owen. At 18 years-old, Owen was an unknown soccer player making his World Cup debut during the 1998 Finals in France. A month later, Owen was a soccer star worth millions of dollars.

On the dark side, there is the somber tale of Columbian defense man Andres Escobar who accidentally kicked a goal into his own net during World Cup USA 1994. The mistake gave the host U.S. team the victory over heavily-favored Columbia. Then Columbians were pre-tournament favorites to win it all and then found themselves humiliated when they were eliminated by the weak Yankee team. After coming home to Columbia, Escobar consoled himself over a beer at a local bar where he was shot and killed by an irate fan.

This year's tournament will again feature traditional powerhouses almost always found in the World Cup's final field of 32 including the national sides (teams) from Brazil, Germany, Italy, and Argentina. Second-tier teams from England, Spain, France, and Holland also usually make an appearance in the World Cup.

The U.S. has long been dismissed by other countries as a lightweight competitor whose teams never really figure into the championship scenario. Even so, the U.S. team has managed to qualify for the World Cup finals twice in a row. But critics of American soccer respond by pointing out how most Americans remain unaware of U.S. soccer's accomplishments.

Even volatile Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad counts himself a passionate football fan who keeps a watchful eye on the Iranian national team as it prepares to go to Germany in June. It is safe to assume that the passionate Iranians would prefer to win the World Cup than make plans for a coming war over nukes. If only . .

The FIFA World Cup, Germany 2006: June 9 - July 9
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com- official FIFA web page