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Judging by the current European qualifying competition, the location of next year's World Cup won't be the only unusual feature about South Africa 2010.

There are some fascinating fixtures this coming week as several countries, boasting great World Cup pedigrees, fight to keep their hopes alive in the face of stern competition from a number of the continent's lesser soccer nations.

The nine European qualifying groups will send 13 teams to South Africa. That's nine group winners plus four countries who will be determined by play-offs between the best eight runners-up from these preliminary groups ... and some scrap it promises to be.

Holland (Group 9) are the only team so far to automatically qualify as a group winner leaving the likes of Macedonia, Norway and Scotland to scrap for second place in their section - Scotland have two huge games in this respect, Macedonia (H) and Holland (H) this Saturday and next Wednesday.

The other eight groups are evenly split. Four have a pair of top seeds who have dominated the group - Greece & Switzerland (Group 2), Germany & Russia (Group 4), England & Croatia (Group 6), Italy & Eire (Group 8) - all look certain to fill the top two spots at the end of the group phase come October 14th.

The other four groups see Portugal & Sweden (Group 1), Poland & Czech Republic (Group 3), Turkey & Belgium (Group 5) and France & Romania (Group 7) all struggling to progress ... even to the play-offs. In fact, several of these top seeded countries will be eliminated and to illustrate the point we've just highlighted the case of three familiar nations:-

France now trade at [22.0] for next year's tournament. They need to beat both Romania (H) and Serbia (A) in the next seven days to reclaim top spot in Group 7 - for which they currently trade as low as [1.94]. There's a very real chance Raymond Domenech's side will end up in the knock-out stage unless they find their form.

Portugal, a big threat in recent major tournaments, are now [46.0] to win in South Africa. They have two very tough matches this coming week, Denmark (A) and Hungary (A). They can't afford to lose either game, making their price of [1.52] just to qualify seem rather short.

And you'll also get upwards of [300.0] on Betfair for the Czech Republic to win in 2010. They need to beat Poland (H) and Slovakia (A) in their next two matches to stand any chance of progressing. On the face of it, their chances aren't good.

The list of missing nations next year could well read like a who's who of recent tournaments, add to the above list the likes of Croatia [150.0], Turkey [310.0], Sweden [690.0], & Poland and Romania [1000.0] who all trade at enormous prices in the outright market.

Conversely several sides, if not mathematically assured of winning their groups, are as good as on the plane for Johannesburg.

Spain [5.8], England [9.4], Germany [13.0] and Italy [14.5] are very much in the driving seat to win their respective groups - and that is reflected in their short odds for next year.

What will be fascinating to see is how the next two rounds of matches shape the groups going into the final phase of matches on October 10 and 14. There's a chance that the group runners-up will be Portugal (Group 1), Switzerland (Group 2), Czech Republic (Group 3), Russia (Group 4), Turkey (Group 5), Croatia (Group 6), France (Group 7), Eire (Group 8) and Scotland (Group 9) making for a set of potential European play-offs worthy of the World Cup QF's.

Remember, only four of these sides will make the finals and any two could be drawn together.

But, to give credit where it's due, we are seeing in this competition the emergence of several new countries onto the European, and possibly world, stage. The likes of Slovakia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia are all vying for qualification as of right - their progress, if anything, highlighting the decline of several previously fancied nations.

Some of Europe's best need to find their form ... fast!