Brazil will send most of the players who are about to take part in World Cup qualifying action in the next few days while Spain, the entertaining winner of last year's Euro 2008 championship, has announced its strongest available squad.
Brazil is in a tough group with World Cup champion Italy, the United States and African champion Egypt. Spain is in a much easier group with Asian champion Iraq, New Zealand, and South Africa.
But much of the focus will be on the organizational capacity of the host nation.
The South Africans, who have been dreaming for decades of the World Cup coming to their continent, have to put on a near-flawless performance to overcome skepticism that their country, plagued by street crime and AIDS, is capable of hosting one of the world's premier sporting events.
Rows of empty seats at the 16 Confederations Cup matches in Johannesburg, Rustenburg, Pretoria, and Bloemfontein won't help, and organizers are scrambling to sell the approximately 30 percent of tickets still available. The problem is that, unlike the World Cup, there won't be the hundreds of thousands of overseas fans for this competition.
"It would be a shame if we don't have full stadiums," FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said. "It is a unique chance. It is something special."
South Africa appears to have overcome the main criticism that the stadiums needed for the World Cup wouldn't be ready on time.
For many months after South Africa was awarded the World Cup, very little work was done to build and refurbish the grounds or improve transportation. Work is still going on, with long lines of traffic in Johannesburg evidence of last-minute efforts to improve the city's main roads.
With Bloemfontein's first game between Brazil and Egypt coming up June 15, workers are busy renovating and modernizing the quaint little airport. Passengers arriving and departing have to squeeze past each other with half the terminal cordoned off for ongoing construction work.
