The struggle to qualify for next year’s World Cup in Germany reaches its penultimate climax tomorrow. This past weekend’s games added 13 more teams to the 10 already qualified – and after tomorrow only five more slots, to be decided in playoffs during October, will remain to be filled.

Yes, there have been some upsets – particularly in Africa, where virtually all the favorites failed to make it. Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, and South Africa are out, their places usurped by Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, and Angola, all of whom will be playing in their first-ever World Cup. Tunisia is the only favored team to make it to Germany.

No surprises in South America, where the four qualifiers are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Ecuador. Tomorrow’s games involving Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile will decide which of the three goes into a playoff game with Australia, the winner from the Oceania area.

Asia has its four teams – Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, and Iran – with Uzbekistan and Bahrain involved in a playoff to decide who will meet the fourth-place finisher from the Concacaf (North and Central American and Caribbean) area. Concacaf has already qualified its three teams – Mexico, America, and Costa Rica – and the fourth place team (which will be either Guatemala or Trinidad & Tobago) will be decided tomorrow.

And so to Europe, which commands 14 of the 32 finals berths. Germany, of course, will be there as hosts. Already certain to join them are Ukraine, the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy, England, Portugal, and Poland. Three of the other six places will be decided tomorrow, leaving six teams to fight it out in playoffs later this month – the final climax – for the remaining three berths.

The Netherlands have looked the brightest and the best, easily topping their group with 10 wins and one tie. Portugal and Croatia are also unbeaten. But avoiding losses is no guarantee to qualification. Two of the continent’s major powers – France and Spain – are still unbeaten, but have been struggling to win games, each having a record of five ties and four wins. They may well have to suffer the indignity of playoffs to ensure qualification.

The most surprising sight at the moment is that of Israel leading Group 4, one point ahead of France and Switzerland, two points ahead of Ireland. The Israelis’ moment of glory will almost certainly be over after tomorrow, for they have played all their 10 games, while their challengers all have a game – and potentially a three-point win – remaining.

Then there’s Group 5, won rather quietly by Italy. Quietly, because Italy’s World Cup qualification campaigns are usually accompanied by panics, crises, and theatrics. But dramatics or not, to those who know their World Cup history, Italy will always loom as one of Europe’s major contenders.

Until recently, the same could be said of Germany. But German soccer has nosedived in recent years, nose-dived so badly that there is widespread discontent in Germany about the caliber of its team. As host nation, Germany does not have to play qualifying games, so on Saturday it played an exhibition game against Turkey – which is struggling to qualify – in Istanbul. The Germans lost 1-2. One headline in the German press read, starkly, “Horrible.”

The German newspaper Bild asked a question of the coach: “Klinsmann, why are we so bad?” Juergen Klinsmann was a top goal-scorer for Germany only a decade ago. After his retirement as a player, he chose to live in California. His appointment, a year ago, as the German coach was an unexpected – some said panic – move, and his decision not to move back to Germany, but to run the team by making frequent flying visits from California, was greeted skeptically. His record so far is a fairly sturdy 11 wins, four losses, and five ties.

But the critics have been merciless, pointing out that the wins have come against minor teams such as Iran, Thailand, South Africa, and Australia. They scoff at Klinsmann’s prediction that he will lead Germany to victory next year. More pointedly, they fear that Germany is a one-man team, and that when captain Michael Ballack is absent – he had the flu and did not play against Turkey – Germany becomes an ordinary team comprised of ordinary players.

A perfectly credible notion when one considers that the biggest controversy over player selection during Klinsmann’s one-year reign has been over whether Jens Lehmann or Oliver Kahn should be the no. 1 goalkeeper. As there is little to choose between the two, the argument seems to reflect an almost desperate desire in the media to create personalities on the team.

In defense of his team, Klinsmann has said: “The young players need defeats to make progress.” Everyone would acknowledge that there is a basic truth in that statement, but it looks ominously like a phrase Klinsmann will not be allowed to forget should things not go well next year.

If the German attitude in the face of its team’s shortcomings is one of resignation, things are rather different in England. There, the atmosphere is one of confidence, almost of arrogant certainty, that England can win the World Cup.

Forward Michael Owen said recently that England will go to Germany “with a squad that, apart from Brazil maybe, I’m not sure is bettered.” It is not easy to see where the confidence comes from. England’s current form is, if anything, worse than Germany’s. In its most recent games, England has been thrashed 4-1 by Denmark in a friendly, while in World Cup qualifying it has been beaten 1-0 by Northern Ireland (the first time England had lost in Belfast since 1927!), and has struggled to shaky 1-0 wins over Wales and Austria.

Coach Sven Goran Eriksson takes his share of criticism, but much of it focuses on the fact that he is a foreigner, a Swede … and shouldn’t England be coached by an Englishman? England’s results are hardly convincing, but the quality of the soccer has been even worse. Owen admits it: “We have been poor … the country is entitled to see better than we have given them so far.”

One could say that for most of Europe’s national teams. At the moment, only the Netherlands and Italy pose a credible threat to the superior soccer played by the South American powers Argentina and, particularly, Brazil.

pgardner@nysun.com