Kaiser regrets while world revels in new stars

Beckenbauer's concern over tired players misses the point. Andrew Longmore welcomes a fresh chapter

Kaiser Franz has spoken, and when Franz Beckenbauer talks about football, it is wise to listen. The quality of this World Cup has suffered, said Beckenbauer last week, from the absence of its stars. "There are billions of people watching and they are watching tired stars," he said. "This is not the future." It is an old refrain, but this is Beckenbauer the businessman, the protector of the sponsors, speaking – not Beckenbauer the footballer.

In his autobiography, entitled simply Passion, Philippe Troussier writes about the difficulty of establishing the concept of team in a country which so readily worships the cult of the individual. But the subjugation of the gifts of Hidetoshi Nakata and Junichi Inamoto to the common cause has been at the heart of Japan's brilliant progress to the second round, where the presence of the United States, South Korea, Mexico and Sweden has reaffirmed the fundamental truth that football is a team game.

When, in far-flung Oita, you sit next to a middle-aged Japanese man clad in the red shirt of England, with the three-lion crest on the front and a big No 10 on the back beneath the name of Owen, you cannot doubt football's powers of projection. David Beckham, besieged at every turn, will bear testimony to Japan's desperate adoption of Western heroes. The World Cup has lost Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Hernan Crespo, Gabriel Batistuta and Juan Veron. Francesco Totti, another expected to stamp his emblem on the tournament, has so far looked as uncomfortable as a tourist deciphering the Tokyo subway map.

Beckenbauer is thinking too little about the World Cup and too much about the Noodle Cup, a fast food which Zidane has been advertising, of Nike, adidas and the commercial hoop-la which has driven football's showpiece to the golden shores of Asia. He is wearing Fifa's fawn jacket, but as the architect of Germany's successful bid for the 2006 World Cup his voice is a powerful one.

It is true that World Cups should be etched with memories of individual brilliance. The skills of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho might yet lift Brazil to worthy comparison with the past, though the best Brazilian teams could defend for their lives as well as attack with brio. But put gold- and-green shirts on the Senegalese players and then tell me that the four-pass move which breached the length of the field and sliced open the Danish defence would not already have earned a place in Brazilian folklore.

But this was only Senegal and Salif Diao, the scorer, plays for Sedan, not Barcelona or Internazionale. What if Zidane or Henry and not Park Ji-Sung of Kyoto Purple Sanga had executed the stunning control and shot which fired Korea through to the second phase for the first time?

The true nature of this tournament still waits for definition. But the tantalising possibility is that European football – and the stars who make their millions from it – is being exposed. The seeds of France's failure were sown, like all great empires, in their success, a success which inevitably bred a cosy complacency. On the eve of the tournament, captain Marcel Desailly asked if his players were still hungry enough. It seemed a strange time to be asking the question, and the answer was emphatic.

France were taken in by their own publicity, shielded from reality by the bland selections of the coach and an enduring belief that time would stand still. Argentina also found that the boundary between experience and old age had changed imperceptibly. What would Marcelo Bielsa, the coach, have given for having Javier Saviola, 20, on the bench instead of Claudio Caniggia, 35? It took Croatia 45 minutes to realise that Davor Suker and Robbie Prosinecki should have been left at home. Alex Aguinaga, Ecuador's ageing playmaker, was exposed against Italy and did not start again. Mexico are thriving without their veterans, Claudio Suarez and Luis Hernandez. At nearly 34, Maldini is a mere shadow of a great player, France's uncertainty stemmed from an ageing back line, a fault that could yet afflict Spain, while two German thirtysomethings, Marco Bode and Thomas Linke, have announced their retirements.

Youth is no respecter of tradition – conventions are being dishonoured every day now by the snappily dressed mobile-phone generation who follow Japan – and, above all, this World Cup, played at a high pace in humid conditions, is proving to be a tournament for young men and fit, well organised, pacy teams. The race for leading scorer is led by Miroslav Klose, an unknown Polish-born striker with Kaiserslautern, and Jon Dahl Tomasson, a Newcastle United reject.

Great players have to earn the right to perform on the biggest stage. They have not done so yet. There is still time. Germany, Italy and Brazil, winners of 10 of the 16 tournaments, lie in wait to reassert the primacy of the footballing superpowers. But, on the evidence of their group form, neither of the European teams have the class or the will to emulate their illustrious predecessors. Brazil are surfing, but in their one real test looked highly vulnerable against Turkey.

Europe still provided the bulk of the last 16 teams, but for the first time the list included a representative from every continent other than Australasia. This is a cause for celebration, not regret. The Kaiser is looking in the wrong place for his lost superstars.