Best (43), a telecommunications technician with Downers, is one of 90 referees who will officiate at the World Cup.
Paul Smith (Auckland), who officiated in Japan and Korea in 2002, is the only New Zealand referee to have worked at a World Cup.
Best is one of four New Zealand referees appointed to this year's World Cup.
The others are Pete O'Leary (Hamilton), Michael Hester (Auckland) and Jan Hintz (Auckland).
They are part of the Oceania group that will officiate as two separate teams.
Best and Hintz are assistant referees who will be joined by Matthew Taro (Solomons) and Tivita Makasini (Tonga).
"It has always been a dream of mine to referee at a World Cup," Best told the Otago Daily Times yesterday.
"It is the ultimate aim to officiate at the biggest sporting event in the world.
"It does feel good. There are hundreds of thousands of referees in the world and thousands of Fifa referees."
Best began refereeing when he was a pupil at Waitaki Boys' High School in 1985 and became a fulltime referee when he finished playing for the Oamaru club seven year later.
He has been on the Fifa list since 2004 and controlled his first international at a pre-World Cup tournament for Oceania at Tahiti in 2006.
Best has modelled his game on the style used by Pierre Collina (Italy), who made his name at the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan.
Oceania officials had bungled earlier chances and had been blacklisted by Fifa until given a chance to redeem themselves at the under-20 World Cup in Canada in 2007.
Best and O'Leary were the New Zealand referees there.
"This was our big test," Best said.
"We had the whole Oceania region relying on us and had to perform."
They did so and were reappointed for the Club World Cup in Japan in 2007 and 2008 and at Abu Dhabi last year.
Best was on the short-list and had to attend training sessions in the Canary Islands and Malaysia and pass fitness tests over the last four months.
The New Zealanders were part of an elite officials group given technical instructions in Malaysia.
For the past four months, Best has been on the Fifa Referees Assistance Programme for referees and has received instructions for his physical fitness programme from the headquarters in Zurich.
The training attempts to replicate games and involves interval training that is close to the stop-start approach experienced during games.
The training is divided into periods of five weeks and he has to use a heart rate monitor and then download the data on his computer to send back to Fifa.
Soccer has been Best's passport to the world and the sport has taken him to 30 countries.
He leaves for Johannesburg today and will be based on a country estate near Pretoria.
He expects to officiate in a minimum of three games at the World Cup - two pool games and one in the last-16 round.
"We only know two days before what games we will control," Best said.
"If we perform well we get another game."
