Germany's glory is disfigured by old world habits

Voller's side fashion chance to equal Brazil's record of four wins as South Korea's innocent spirit falters in the face of cynicism

As Oliver Neuville reminded us so soon after making the goal that could just deliver the World Cup final of the ages, a game to deprive Brazil of the bragging right of being the greatest football nation the world is ever likely to know, it is not easy to love the German footballer.

Admire his instinct to win, of course. Treat him with the deference you would automatically extend to a wounded wolf, no doubt. Wish we had at least half a dozen of him the next time we play a match that really matters, naturally.

But loving him, no, it is just too much of a push. You cannot love an an utterly amoral approach to what is still, technically at least, supposed to be a game. Neuville made a wonderful run along the right to set up Michael Ballack's winning goal against the superbly motivated and defiant Koreans. That took the Germans, less than a year after being pulverised by England in Munich, to Sunday's final in Yokohama and the chance to draw alongside the astounding Brazilian record of four wins. Yet again, they were on the high road of football history and Neuville was to the fore.

So how did he handle his moment of supreme glory? He took a dive in the Korean penalty area and received a yellow card. It was not any old run-of-the-mill cheating little dive. It was one that made you want to retch. It was a monster fake designed to kill off the Third World upstarts, who were allegedly the beneficiaries of a Fifa fix.

Had it come off, had the Swiss referee displayed the reflective powers of the inhabitant of a cuckoo clock, perhaps there would have been a fresh furore over a new conspiracy, one that might have been labelled Cynicism Hits Back. But, of course, it was only an attempted insurance payment on a place in the final, and all its failure did was tell you how sick so much of the football of the old world has become, and in the most routine way. It also, for those who cared one way or the other, underlined again how much the game of Korea had invaded the senses with its decency and its spirit.

Perhaps innocence was always going to do in the Koreans in the end. Maybe you can only run and fight for so long at an elevation you have never known before. Maybe you can only take on so much oxygen and so much belief in such a short time.

But as the Koreans left us to wonder all over again about the Germany ability to fashion great results in the most unpromising circumstances – poignantly,the passage to still another World Cup final came just a few days after the death of Fritz Walter, the German captain in 1954 when victory came in the final over Ferenc Puskas's brilliant Hungarian side after an 8-3 slaughter in a group game – they also offered us a few last images of a campaign that sent eddies of hope into every obscure corner of the football world.

The Korean captain, Hong Myung-Bo, at 33 playing his fourth and probably last World Cup, made a brave, resigned face and thanked the nation for investing such great hope. "We'll do our best from here," he said, long after proving that if Korea was to fail it would not be because of a faltering heart.

But then if anyone was going to beat the Koreans, surely it was the Germans. The wiles of winning, ugly or beautiful, it does not matter, is in their bones and if we have to pick the date of the birth of their latest resurrection it was probably that rainy night in Munich when the English buried their bemusement at a 5-1 victory and celebrated the birth of a new, winning England. The losing coach, Rudi Völler, said at the time: "It's been a terrible night for German football, but we will come back. We always do."

They do it stealthily but relentlessly and when they struggled out of their group – after pounding the inept Saudis, when they squeezed past Paraguay and then lived so dangerously against the Americans the warning lights were surely beginning to blaze. It is, after all, the German way of football. They do not sweep you aside. They gnaw you to death.

Are Brazil, who may possibly reshuffle their tactics in the absence of the brilliant, suspended Ronaldinho in today's semi-final against Turkey, gnawable? We have to suspect so because if they were imperiously impregnable when down to 10 men against England last Friday, they laboured through much of their previous game with Belgium under the heaviest pressure. Turkey, as the proved in so comprehensively shutting down Senegal, are a team of both wit and discipline and if their coach, Senol Gunes, holds his nerve and continues to play the match-winning young substitute Ilhan Mansiz in place of the faded, toothless hero Hakan Sukur, they might just take a bite of the brilliant but erratic Brazilians.

But you have to hope not, because though Brazil have known better days when their talent was so much more firmly based in a balanced, if not always watertight, structure, they still represent some of the best values of the game. They do not fold their tents the moment they gain an advantage. They still trust the inherent superiority of their own game.

So in Saitama today neutrality – and respect for the progress of the Turks – wilts against the imperative of a Brazilian victory on Sunday. It is important because the whole point of this World Cup became apparent the moment Senegal outplayed France in the opening game in Seoul three and a half weeks ago. It was to strike a blow against the power complex of European football, its conservative, dead-hand tactics and its wilful grinding down of the physical reserves of its greatest talents. It means that, now the Koreans have joined the Senegalese on the wrong side of the rainbow, Brazil are the best chance for a last burst of sunshine in Yokohama on Sunday.

England's consolation, according to David Beckham, is that they are likely to win the European Championship in Portugal in two years' time. He is quoted thus: "I honestly felt we would win the World Cup if we got past Brazil. Euro 2004 is next up on our agenda and it is something I'm convinced is well within our grasp. There is so much talent and desire within the squad that the 2006 World Cup in Germany is a genuine target for us as well. In Japan it wasn't to be but there is always a next time – and who can dare say we won't win in Portugal where we failed in Japan? Our spirit is unshakeable – our belief in each other is rock solid."

Meanwhile, back here in the real football world, Germany are preparing for their seventh World Cup final. They have won three, in Berne, in Munich and in Rome, and lost three, at Wembley, in Madrid and in Mexico City. It is a phenomenal record, one which should impose caution on the loose talk of an England team which, in the end, failed miserably here. If we cannot love the Germans, we must respect them deeply. In the most competitive terms, their football continues to reside on a different planet.

When victory had come in Seoul last night, Germany's greatest current player, Oliver Kahn, the goalkeeper who has the look of a mad but quite agreeable tank commander, embraced the brilliant, beaten Dutch coach, Guus Hiddink. In the game Kahn had raged at his co-defenders. Now his face was suffused with something that could have easily have been mistaken for tenderness. At least it was the expression of a man who knew all there was to know about the fine line between victory and defeat. But then he is a German footballer, which means that he was almost certainly born with the knowledge.