Next Friday the world becomes a soccer ball, as it does every four years when the World Cup rolls around. In Brazil, the banks have been told they can keep special hours so as not to interfere with television viewing times. In Croatia, a recent poll revealed that more than 40% of workers intend to take time off to watch their team. In England, a survey of bosses found them in no mood for such slackness and threatening harsh action for no-shows. “Allowing staff to phone in sick just because they have a hangover sets a precedent,” one employer said.

And so it goes. For one month the attention of millions of soccer fans – and millions more caught up in the frenzy – will focus on the 64 games played out by 32 countries in Germany. The old joke used to be that only the Americans didn’t understand what was going on and where everyone had gone. Not anymore.All 64 games will be seen live on television here, but most important, America is represented by a strong team with a real chance of … well, not winning the cup, but at least of pulling an upset or two.

Initially, the 32 teams are divided into groups of four. Each team plays the others once, and the top two in each group advance. The 16 losing teams go home. The tournament thus starts off as a three-game affair. No, it’s really a one-game tournament. That first game is the vital game – lose it and your chances of advancing are virtually zero. In the past two World Cups (those played since the number of teams was increased to 32) 23 teams have lost their opening game, and 22 of those teams failed to reach the next round.

This is not always a case of weak teams surrendering early. In 2002, world powers France and Portugal both lost their openers and were quickly eliminated.

The team to beat, as per usual, is Brazil – the only nation that has participated in all 17 tournaments since the first one in 1930, the only nation to win the trophy five times (Italy and Germany each have won it three times), and seemingly the only nation that can produce an endless stream of world class players.

Brazil’s position as ultra-favorite may work against it, but there is surely no doubt that if this 18th World Cup is to be won by a team playing flowing, attacking soccer and presenting the sport at its best – what Pele has famously called “The Beautiful Game” – that team can only be Brazil. The challengers to Brazil’s supremacy are familiar. When the former German great Franz Beckenbauer was asked recently who, along with Brazil, might be considered potential winners, he unhesitatingly replied, “Argentina, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, England – that’s it.”

This is nothing new. These are all countries that – apart from Spain – have won the World Cup before. During the past 10 years, a steady supply of gifted African players has joined top European teams, but so far there has been no sign of an African national team good enough to take the title.

Beckenbauer, having won a World Cup as a player in 1974 and as a coach in 1990, is now in charge of organizing one. The soccer is the easy part. Security presents more problems. There’s the possibility of terrorism, with America, England (both high on Al Qaeda’s hit list) and Iran considered high risk teams. A 30,000-strong police force will be in action, AWACS planes will patrol the skies, and 10,000 troops will be on standby in case of emergency.

Elaborate precautions are also necessary against soccer’s home-grown brand of terrorism: the hooligan fans. English fans – some 100,000 are expected in Germany – have traditionally been the worst offenders, but the scourge is thought to be under control. The British police will prevent some 3,500 known offenders from traveling, and are sending 40 of their own officers to mingle with the England fans in Germany. A more vexing problem for the German police is the threat of hooliganism arriving from the East. Poland’s national team is in the tournament and large numbers of Polish fans are expected … but will they include hooligans?

“It’s worrying,” a top police official told the magazine Der Speigel. “We don’t know these people and the Polish police don’t know them sufficiently either.”

The Germans have their own hooligans, and another police officer admitted, “What gives me headaches sometimes is thinking about how we are going to keep our own 10,000 hooligans in line.”

Whatever their duties, the police have been told to spruce themselves up. Police officers will not be allowed to wear earrings, body studs, ponytails, dreadlocks, three-day-old beards, or visible tattoos.

The official slogan of the World Cup is “A Time To Make Friends.” But just to be on the safe side, a $3.5 million be-nice-to-foreigners drive is being conducted. “We are unfortunately not perceived as a particularly friendly people,” Beckenbauer said. “We have to improve on that.”

But Germany’s biggest worry is its team. The evidence has been increasing that Germany is slipping off its perch as one of the world’s powers. It is now more than four years since Germany beat any of the other major powers, and a humiliating 4-1 loss to Italy earlier this year produced a classic headline in Bild: “Mamma Mia, Are We Bad!”

Coach Jurgen Klinsmann has come under harsh criticism for his training methods and for his decision to go with younger, less experienced players. His warmup games for the team have hardly been taxing – the 7-0 win over Luxemburg on May 27 is not going to convince many fans that the team is suddenly a potential winner.

But … maybe it is. In the history of the World Cup, no host nation has ever failed to qualify for the second round. Once there, the real pressure is on – and that is when playing at home before huge supportive crowds has always been a huge plus.

For continued World Cup coverage, please see page 21