BERLIN: Very few people ever agree on what constitutes a great World Cup and even fewer are prepared to accept that anything post-Pele counts for much, anyway. But rarely has a tournament had divided opinion like this one. Some think it was the best, most open and most attractive World Cup for at least 20 years, while others will tell you it has been the worst of all time.

The odd thing is that both these positions are tenable. It has been the best and the worst of World Cups. It just depends on which statistics you use and, more specifically, the value you put on goals.

If a World Cup can be judged entirely by the number of goals, then this has indeed been a poor one. If early fears of a defence-dominated, low-scoring tournament seemed to evaporate after six goals were scored in the opening game, they proved well-founded once the group stage was over.

Only 24 goals have been scored in the knockout stages so far (not counting penalty shootouts) and it will take three goals in this evening's final for this set of games to avoid going down as the lowest-scoring since the last-16 format was introduced 20 years ago.

For purposes of comparison it is easier and more meaningful to concentrate on the knockout stages (not including the third-fourth play-off), when the leading teams play each other in a do-or-die situation — and the most free-scoring World Cup in the past two decades has been USA 94 with 44 goals in 15 games. The lowest-scoring was the last one, in South Korea and Japan, with 26 goals — an aberration blamed on the heat, the referees, the co-hosting experiment and the fact that `minor' teams such as South Korea and Turkey did well.

This tournament is threatening to break that record. To put the current figure into perspective, 42 goals were scored in France 98's knockout stages and the same number in Mexico 86, while Italia 90, widely and rightly derided as the most negative, cynical and overly defensive World Cup of all, yielded 30. So unless France and Italy manage seven goals between them in Berlin, a most unlikely prospect given the excellence of their defending so far, this tournament is not even going to match the one that was so bad it made FIFA change the rules.

Outstanding defending

PHOTO: AP

NOT IN MY BOOK: Refereeing during the World Cup has raised a few eyebrows. Here Japan's Toru Kamikawa shows the yellow card to Germany's two-goal hero of Friday, Bastian Schweinsteiger, for overdoing his celebration by removing his jersey.

Yet are goals the only measure? This has not been a defensive tournament, nor has it been a cynical one. There has been some outstanding defending and goals have been hard to come by, but plenty of people like their football that way. The entire population of Italy, for example.

The legacy of Pele means that when people think of the player of the tournament they normally envision a goalscorer, or at least an attacking player. In Germany it is hard not to argue that Fabio Cannavaro has been head and shoulders above everyone else. Even though he stands at only 5ft 9in, the Italy captain, who wins his hundredth cap in the final, has been a giant.

Not far behind him has been Lilian Thuram, Juventus teammate and leader of the equally well-organised France defence. The romantics will be trying to make a case for the retiring Zinedine Zidane, but unless he wins the final for France single-handed it will not be true.

The two strongest defences in the competition are the reason France and Italy face each other in the final and the only slight worry about what should be a compelling final is how a goal is going to be scored. Italy has conceded only one all tournament and that was an own goal. France has let in just two, one a penalty and the other something of a freak goal by South Korea.

It was the France defence that saw off Brazil, while the impossibility of scoring against Italy exasperated teams like Australia (facing 10 men) and Germany.

So why not celebrate the art of defending for a change? France and Italy are not boring, flair-free teams who have been grinding out results. France has flair and elegance running through its side, while Italy has been one of the most enterprising and attacking teams of the tournament. Find that hard to believe?

Lippi formula

Look a little bit closer at what Marcello Lippi has been doing. First, he brought six forwards. Yes, Sven, six. Second, he has used them all. Third, they have all scored. And Italy has not been involved in any meaningless group games; it has needed to win every match.

Every Italy player bar the two substitute goalkeepers has played a part in this World Cup, which is something for Theo Walcott, Jermaine Jenas and Wayne Bridge to think about. Perhaps most impressively of all, when Italy needed goals in extra time to avoid a shootout against Germany's penalty experts, Lippi made three attacking substitutions and produced a result like a rabbit from a hat. Italy will always send teams of expert defenders to World Cups, but it would be a mistake to define this one by defence alone.

It seems to me that Italy has both the defence and the firepower to prevail in the final, though I tipped England to reach the semifinals, so what do I know?

Only that, if the above prediction is wrong and France gains a second star to stitch on its shirts, England's grotesque shambles of a World Cup will appear even worse. Fancy getting all excited about 40 years of hurt and wheeling out the boys of '66 like Chelsea Pensioners at a parade when our dearly beloved near neighbours, with a team half full of familiar names from the Premiership, are on the verge of winning their second World Cup in eight years. England could cope much more easily with Italy winning a fourth time.

It is a bona fide World Cup team, a force of nature, just as much as Brazil or Argentina, with its own unique playing style, an enviable tournament record and a squad of players who play in Italy. France winning the thing, with players such as Jean-Alain Boumsong, Mikael Silvestre and Pascal Chimbonda on the squad list, would only make England feel more inadequate.

England was inadequate in this World Cup, its abject performances making a complete mockery of all the pride, preening and misplaced confidence that went before, but let's leave that sore point for another four years or so.

Whatever this World Cup has been about, it has not been England. Graham Poll and Wayne Rooney's studs apart, their impact on this World Cup was barely discernible.

Fair play

What this World Cup has been about, even more than impressive defences, is fans and fair play. If that reads like a slogan, it is not a mere platitude.

By virtue of geography, Germany is an excellent venue for a European World Cup and the Germans have been excellent hosts. The only possible gripe supporters could have is that some of the hotel price-hikes have been shocking, but in every other respect fans — even those without tickets — have been looked after, treated courteously and made to feel a welcome part of the tournament.

There has been no trouble to speak of and even Germany v Poland in Dortmund passed off with only a few skirmishes. The past three European World Cups have been increasingly supporter-friendly events and it has been noticeable that fans are becoming ever more sociable.

At least to an English observer it is apparent that the nature of supporters has changed. Perhaps it is more to do with the high cost of watching World Cup football than the screening of hooligans by the authorities, but the people who have been out at this tournament are not the same ones who fought in the streets in Marseille or wrecked parts of Rimini. Back then, England supporters in particular tended to be young single males with a pack mentality. Now you see many more wives, girlfriends and families with children. This is not a behaviour change, it is a change of faces.

This World Cup is being watched by different people, as opposed to past tournaments, so much so that the atmosphere at games, while always noisy and vibrant, has often lacked the hard edge that big international crunch games ought to have. It has been a bit like Manchester United and the prawn-sandwich brigade writ large. But gentrification is hardly a new issue in football. FIFA is perfectly happy to have a more affluent and less rowdy audience and if the only choice is a return to hooliganism then there is no choice to be made.

Balance needed

FIFA does have a choice over the fair play issue. Referees, cautions and player suspensions have been far too prevalent in Germany. No one wants a return to cheating and cynicism, but no one wants to see good players miss big games for pettifogging reasons, either. There is a balance to be struck and in four years' time one would like to see either more sympathetic refereeing, perhaps a second amnesty after the quarterfinal stage, or some sort of meaningful appeal process. This has not been a dirty World Cup by any stretch of the imagination, yet the number of cards has been ridiculous, as have been some of the `offences' for which players have been cautioned.

The thought of South Africa 2010 producing even more cards, which is where the game seems to be going, does not bear thinking about. FIFA should call a halt now. The improvements brought about after Italia 90 have been a great success, but the process should not be allowed to continue to the nth degree, even if referees appear quite content for it to do so. Some safeguards are now needed to protect referees from themselves and ensure there is still a game worth watching out there.

That will do very well as an epitaph for this World Cup. Not the best of all time perhaps, but a very good one all the same, and a quite magnificent, truly global event. Germany gave us a game worth watching.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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