Race, Place, and Football: Morocco and Egypt as "Arab Africa" in the Race to Host the 2010 FIFA World Cup This paper examines the competition between Morocco, Egypt, and South Africa to host the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup. The decision by FIFA (football's world governing body) to award the 2010 Cup to an African nation set off a vigorous competition between these three nations to win the right to host the prestigious event. With hopes of raising the prestige, political profiles, and economic fortunes of their nations, officials from Morocco, Egypt, and South Africa constructed geographic, political, economic, and historical narratives to win over FIFA officials. This paper argues that a racial discourse was at the center of these constructions; that a discursive struggle between "Arab African" and "Black African" narratives forced FIFA officials to consider the intersection of race and geography in awarding the first World Cup to be hosted on the continent of Africa. "Race, Place, and Football" links two seemingly disparate fields of historical research. First, it makes an important contribution to the literature on Pan-African identity. Since the 1960's, attempts to construct Pan-African unity have engendered numerous political and economic conferences. A central theme in these conferences, and in related speeches by African leaders, has been the attempt to define "Africaness" in light of the continent's linguistic, religious, phenotypic, and historical diversity. Starting with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's attempts in the 1960's to take a leading role in Pan-African unity discussions, the authenticity of "Arabs" as Africans has been an important, if often implicit, element of disagreement between Arab North Africa and Sub-Saharan, "black" African nations. "Race, Place, and Football" links these political debates to the immensely popular cultural practice of football, and suggests that sport has played a central role in the discursive contestation of racial categories on the continent. Second, the paper links the Arab world to the growing literature on sport and society. Despite the enormous popularity of football in the Arab World, relatively few researchers have examined the role of sport in the Arab historical narrative. This paper suggests that sport indeed has played a central role in attempts by Morocco and Egypt to define their national projects on the global stage; that racialized narratives of nationalism, modernity, and progress have been mapped on to, and promoted through, their participation in international sporting competition.