London 2012: The Countdown Series: Football (Soccer) Preview

42 days to go until the first day of the London Olympics.

Of course the first event to take place at this year's Games of the XXX Olympiad is the football (soccer).

Six venues will host the football at the London Olympics, headlined by Wembley Stadium (pictured).

The men will have sixteen teams this year. All are based on regional qualifiers (similar to the World Cups) hence some notable programs aren't there. Take a look at these groupings for yourself.

Men

GROUP A

• Great Britain (GBR)
• Senegal (SEN)
• United Arab Emirates (UAE)
• Uruguay (URU)

GROUP B

• Mexico (MEX)
• South Korea (KOR)
• Gabon (GAB)
• Switzerland (SUI)

GROUP C

• Brazil (BRA)
• Egypt (EGY)
• Belgium (BEL)
• New Zealand (NZL)

GROUP D

• Spain (ESP)
• Japan (JPN)
• Honduras (HON)
• Morocco (MAR)

Now, who is missing from here? Let's see. For starters, Argentina failed to qualified. They won the last two gold matches in the Olympics. The United States also failed to qualify, so has Netherlands, Italy and Germany among others.

Historically, Great Britain won the most times in this event, three times. The Brits defeated France in the final at Paris 1900, and would later defeat Denmark back to back at both London 1908 and Stockholm 1912.

On to the women's side, and a lot of World Cup momentum from last year has carried over. Japan, the World Cup champions are among the twelve that qualified for this year's Olympics.

Women

GROUP E

• Great Britain (GBR)
• New Zealand (NZL)
• Cameroon (CMR)
• Brazil (BRA)

GROUP F

• Japan (JPN)
• Canada (CAN)
• Sweden (SWE)
• South Africa (RSA)

GROUP G

• United States (USA)
• France (FRA)
• Colombia (COL)
• DPRK/North Korea (PRK)

This portion of the football first was introduced at Atlanta 1996. This will be the fifth time there will be women's football in the Olympics. The United States won three of those four, with wins except at Sydney 2000, where they lost to Norway in the final.

Next up: a look at swimming.