Are you stuck at work, sitting behind a desk, when you’d much rather be in the pub or on the couch watching the soccer? You’re not alone.

But with dozens of websites offering live coverage and useful information related the 2010 soccer World Cup, every desk jockey can keep pace with the beautiful game.

TechCentral has rounded up what we think are some of the best World Cup-related websites. Have we missed any? Tell us about them in the comments section below.

FootyFire.com

SuperSport Live and FootyFire.com

If you want to watch streaming video of the World Cup matches, SuperSport Live is a good option. It’s a live feed of the SuperSport 3 channel. But you need to be a DStv Premium subscriber to register and watch.

The best free video feed we could find was at FootyFire.com. It’s actually quite watchable once you’ve closed the advertisements that cover the feed when you first load the website.

Just be warned that your boss might not look too kindly on you streaming sport to your PC when you should be working. And your IT administrator might not be happy with the amount of bandwidth you consume watching live video on your company’s Internet connection.

If you’re aware of other live video feeds — preferably free ones — please let us know in the comments section below.

Marca.com’s 2010 World Cup Calendar

This Flash-based calendar is superb and a brilliant way of keeping up with which teams are playing when, and which matches are happening on particular days.

Simply scroll the mouse around the stadium-shaped wheel and view, for example, which matches are being played at which stadium and at which times.

It’s our favourite World Cup website.

(Tip of the hat to @marycbruce, @SimoneBiz, @simondingle and many others for suggesting it)

The Guardian’s World Cup 2010 Twitter Replay

The Guardian‘s website, guardian.co.uk, has created a fascinating, Flash-based action replay of every match in the World Cup.

But the replay isn’t video footage. Rather, it shows World Cup-related hashtags in animated expanding and shrinking circles based on their frequency of use during matches.

When a goal is scored, watch for an explosion in the size of the circles related to the team scoring.

It’s hard to explain in words, but it’s very cool. Be sure to check it out.

We also like CNN’s Twitter Buzz tool, which uses a similar sort of concept.

Kosmix TweetBeat World Cup

This is another website that makes clever use of Twitter. It gives you a real-time view of what people around the world are saying about the World Cup. It does this by filtering every Twitter message and providing a live stream of soccer-related tweets, which you can then speed up or slow down to a desired reading speed.

It also integrates soccer-related headlines from major news websites around the world.

Google

It may seem a bit obvious to recommend Google to find information about the World Cup. But the US Web search giant deserves special mention for the work it’s done.

Simply search for terms like “World Cup”, or “World Cup Group A” to get live scores, the latest results and match schedules. Rival Bing from Microsoft has something similar.

Then there’s a special gadget for users of iGoogle, Google’s personalised landing page.

And if you use Google Chrome, you can install the official Fifa.com Chrome extension. This provides a live feed of match results and statistics as well as news related to the event — it’s pretty neat. You can even personalise the extension for alerts of goals scored by your team as they happen.

Stadiums In3sixty

Now this is really cool. With Stadiums In3sixty, you can check out all of the 2010 stadiums in 360-degree virtual tours.

Developed by Virtual Africa with backing from Primedia Broadcasting, Stadiums In3sixty allows you to pan around the stadiums and zoom in for more detail. And while you’re there, check out the amazing Vodacom Super 14 final and semifinal gigapixel images.

(Hat tip: @marycbruce)

ESPN Soccernet, Reuters and other sites

When it comes to news updates of the game, there are thousands of websites to choose from. Two of the international sites TechCentral readers like, and we’re quite taken with, are ESPN Soccernet and Reuters. Locally, Go2010.co.za, which is powered by publishing group Avusa, is good. And the match reports offered by The Daily Maverick are worth reading.

(Hat tip: @dimity123, @brendan_l and @SimoneBiz)