The world's biggest global event (sorry London 2012) comes around again and we await on the on-field drama as eagerly as ever before. But football is not only a game these days and the off-field fireworks will also be significant.
As the powerful worlds of finance, business and media have made further inroads into football in recent years, the sport's governing body FIFA continues to commercialize its premier tournament, with the resulting tensions between playing and watching football and making money becoming ever more obvious.
This time around, amid all the hullabaloo over the usual ticketing farce, the hooliganism issue has curiously enough almost been forgotten, despite the best efforts of the xenophobic British tabloids to cash in on the beer-fuelled fervour of a summer of England v the rest of the world.
Spectator violence is still a problem in South America, Italy and Eastern Europe but is really feeling old hat in its homeland, where the relatively trouble-free experiences of England fans in Japan in 2002 and Portugal offer hope for a peaceful 2006. The more the media and the world's population at large invade the game the harder it will be for the right-wing yob minority who dominated England support for so long to hog the headlines.
England's traveling army, estimated to be about 100,000 in June, has benefited from the banning orders imposed since 2000 on known troublemakers, years after they should have been implemented, but which have served to excise a good number of louts from spoiling the party. That said, England's yob culture breeds potential new hooligans every day and Germany has a high potential for 'kicking-off' given the historical baggage, the proximity to several soccer-mad nations and the plentiful supplies of strong beer.
Some outbreaks of those traditional British pastimes of glass-smashing and plastic chair-throwing are likely but it will be extraordinarily depressing if there is a repeat of Marseille in 1998, when England's first day at the World Cup became an orgy of violence off the field. We cannot be complacent as there was trouble in Euro 2004, albeit from lager louts in the Algarve far removed from the stadia.
The biggest crime though has to be FIFA's insane ticketing policy, which they must be well aware fuels the black market and the embarkation of thousands of ticketless travelers they so speciously claim to want to discourage for security reasons.
It really is time for governments to step in to stop the world's premier global event being ruined by short-sighted greed which permits companies like Avaya (who they?) to gleefully harvest 25,000 complimentary tickets in return for their sponsorship dollars, while the fans of England have to pay for theirs, and are only allocated less than 15,000.
Let us not forget either the cartel FIFA has set up with Mastercard, which showed all potential fans lacking said credit card the exit door. FIFA President Sepp Blatter's bust-up with the uncrowned king of Germany Franz Beckenbauer over the DFB's handling of tickets might have confirmed the outside howls of protest had indeed been justified, but the real problem remains the fact FIFA is outrageously offering far more tickets to sponsors than to fans.
The month-long tournament is also a chance for Germany to wash away its World War Two image once and for all. As the wartime generation dies off, the swastika-filled images that still dominate many minds outside that country will be challenged, one hopes, by more positive ones. "The World as a Guest amongst Friends" is the optimistic official slogan of the tournament in a nation painfully aware of its unpopularity abroad and which wants to be liked.
Germany is already a wonderful country to visit, with tremendous scenery, vibrant cities and great beer and sausages but is guilty of not doing more to promote its attractions abroad. Its London tourist office for example is not open to the public and has a full-time staff of three.
The big issue that came out of 2002 was club v country. The French world champs, Zidane, Henry, Vieira et al, arrived jaded after their tiring domestic and European campaigns and slipped out in the first round a shadow of themselves and almost an insult to the prestige of the event.
Steven Gerrard should have been in England's midfield in 2002 but his club, Liverpool, had delayed giving him the operation he had needed earlier in the season, and he duly got injured shortly before the finals, a repeat of Bryan Robson's failure to last the 1986 and 1990 finals. Once again alas it seems obvious that a big club manager is demanding a player of his does not play in the finals if it might harm his chances of starting the domestic season in anything but peak fitness, even when a nation is desperate for him to play.
The international game is increasingly under threat from the insatiable demands of the club one, and since the last World Cup the prospect of international associations having to pay clubs to borrow 'their' players has become a serious possibility, and one which could really hurt the less rich associations. The fact that players perform basically unwaged for their nations may seem anathema to the commercial world of soccer in 2006, and a relic of the game's amateur beginnings, but there is surely a principle here worth defending.
If the quality of the football is not guaranteed to dazzle, the collected fandom always does. For those who travel to a World Cup nothing can compare to experiencing the camaraderie between football fanatics from all across the globe mingling.
World Cup trips full of anecdotes and magical experiences live long in the memory, and prove for fans how twenty-two men kicking a piece of leather around can give their lives true meaning.
World Cups are hot and bothered affairs, full of intense passions, frustrations, agonies and ecstasies played out in the height of summer. There are forces of good and bad at work but let us hope the good ones triumph. In a sport that has seemed in danger of losing its soul for the past few years, its premier tournament retains an essential purity.
For the true fans, not the corporate arrivistes, the brain dead tabloid xenophobes or the equally dumb and ugly hooligans, this is the Holy Grail of the sport, a sacrament received simultaneously by millions of people equally blessed or cursed, depending on how you look at football these days.
If you have hope then this tournament should be a time to reclaim the game and celebrate the best of the Beautiful Game. I will do my bit to feel good about football in June, though it is not going to be easy.