Perfect time to enjoy the beautiful game

SOCCER/2006 World Cup finals: This June the curtain will be raised on the World Cup finals. Emmet Malone takes a look at the main stage and the principal actors

In some countries contemplating the staging of a major championships, those behind the bid seek to turn the process on its head by persuading the key non-believers to view the entire exercise as an updating of the nation's infrastructure - with a bit of a football festival to mark all the road and rail openings at the end.

Germany's transport and telecommunications, however, have worked just fine for a long time and so it borders on showing off that the hosts of next summer's World Cup have expended such large sums on projects like the one in Berlin which will see the city's main train station transformed into Europe's major rail hub.

Getting the project finished in time for the opening games of the championship on June 9th will be tight, but then the job was scheduled to be done in about the time it has taken the English to decide on what tiles to use in the toilets of the new St Pancras Eurostar terminal.

Inviting the world around for a shindig, as Londoners will discover over the next six and half years, has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind.

Where the Germans have saved on infrastructure, they have rather enthusiastically splurged of sporting facilities.

Visiting teams will be able to avail of some the best training and support set-ups in the world while the organisers have, with the support of local and federal government, provided a dozen completely new or dramatically revamped stadiums in which to stage the games.

All look outstanding and all but one (there is no team worth talking about in Leipzig which has been included as a venue, both because the city is where the German Football Federation was founded and because the organisers did not want to be seen to entirely shun the former East) should contribute to the long term development of the Bundesliga. They're biggish too but come June and July, you can be sure, not nearly big enough.

The setting then is as good as any in which the competition has previously been held. The tournament itself, one suspects, might just match its predecessors too even if, in common with the last two championships, it takes a while to fully hit its stride.

The expansion of the event before France '98 to 32 teams has robbed the group stages of much of the do-or-die element that previously characterised the latter part of the competition's opening phase.

Indeed, prior to the recent draw for the tournament's eight groups, it was generally accepted that the worst thing that could happen any of the favourites was to be landed with one of the two top European sides to miss out on a seeding.

In the event, that fate befell Italy - who must play the Czechs - and Argentina, who were landed with the Dutch. In both instances, as it turned out, there were accusations from back home that the procedure had been rigged.

Having exited early last time the Argentineans are especially aggrieved. The meeting between the South Americans and the Dutch in Frankfurt on June 26th - a repeat of the 1978 final in Buenos Aires which the hosts won 3-1 after extra-time - should prove a particular highlight of the opening weeks and might signal the end of the road for one of those countries with genuine ambitions.

More generally, the first round should serve as a something of a warm up for the game's bigger names with only those who fall well short of their own best or victim to one of the inevitable surprise packages (France and Portugal as well as Argentina were all casualties last time around) missing out on a place in the knock-out stage of the World Cup finals.

The jostling for the various groups' top spots should add bite to the latter group games, though, as the price for finishing second can prove high indeed.

The prospect of England (potentially serious contenders for once) playing the hosts as early as June 24th will not, for instance, appeal to either national coach. Although the fact that the game would, if Germany topped Group A and the English were runners up in Group B, take place in the tournament's smallest stadium (just under 39,000 seats) might just concern the Leipzig police department more than either of the participating associations.

After that, Italy and Brazil, France and Spain or Portugal and Argentina are just some of the potential second-round clashes and, as the days roll past, the competition is bound to produce its share of heavyweight encounters. . . the heaviest of all, one would like to think, coming on July 9th in Berlin where the 18th world champions will finally be crowned.