Those of us who like to extol the wonders of Pele’s “Beautiful Game” have been looking for somewhere to hide since this year’s utterly uninspired World Cup came to an obscene climax with Zinedine Zidane’s appalling headbutt into Marco Materazzi’s chest.

Beauty? There was precious little of that commodity to be found throughout the tournament’s 64 games. Banality and boredom held sway as the majority of the 32 teams took the field prepared to play cautious, defensive soccer, determined to avoid risk-taking.

Tactically, this meant that most teams were playing with a 4–5–1 formation, which made for a crowded midfield (crowded, for the most part with hard-running athletes and physical enforcers, certainly not with creative players) and, up front, the loneliness of the single striker.

German legend Franz Beckenbauer was shocked into coming up with a joke about it: “If I had my way the teams that play with one striker would not be allowed into the tournament.” Being a German joke, no one laughed at it — almost everyone nodded and acknowledged the grim truth underlying it, which Beckenbauer double-nudged: “I was seriously annoyed by the lack of courage from some teams — how afraid the coaches were.”

One team that could certainly not be accused of a defensive mentality was Germany. With 10 goals scored in its first four games, Germany was right up there with Argentina and Brazil, the South Americans who were expected to light up the tournament.

The problem with Germany — a massive problem — was that it was a poor team carried forward by the exultation and euphoria that always goes with being the host nation.

Coach Jurgen Klinsmann is being lauded to the skies for producing a team that could actually win a game or two after a recent run of abysmal form. But this is nonsense. Never, in all the preceding 17 World Cups, had the host team failed to qualify for the second round, and you could be sure that Germany was not going to be the first nation to fail. So Germany duly qualified from a weak group, won easily against the mediocre Swedes, and then ran into Argentina. Soccer is famous — and it is nothing to boast about — for this sort of game: Argentina played the soccer, but Germany hung in there and managed a ludicrously undeserved win on penalty kicks. Next up Italy — much too good for the Germans, whose only resource, yet again, was to hang in there; not quite long enough this time, as Italy finished them off with two late goals.

The Germans had given us nothing in terms of top-level soccer. Their one star player, Michael Ballack, contributed little; the only praiseworthy quality of the Germans was their insistence on putting their heads down and going for goal — and of still trying to attack, even when they were under great pressure from the Argentines and the Italians.

We had hoped for great things from Brazil. And we got nothing. Brazil used two forwards — Ronaldo and Adriano, mostly — but neither turned on the style. In midfield Ronaldinho was abysmal, the flop of the World Cup.The cumbersome, overweight Ronaldo had his moment of glory — and a wonderful goal it was — when he broke Gerd Muller’s record by scoring his 15th World Cup goal, but that was all.

Argentina was the team that inspired, with its brilliant attacking soccer, flowing and unafraid, a joy to watch. In its very first game it ran into a similarly-minded team, Ivory Coast, and they gave us a superb game, arguably the best of the tournament.

But attacking soccer was not to be the theme of these games. After the first 48 games, I wrote down my candidates for the MVP of the first round and was surprised — shocked, even — to see that the three players I had chosen were all defenders: Roberto Ayala (Argentina), Lucio (Brazil), and Fabio Cannavaro (Italy).

“There aren’t enough goals,” complained FIFA president Sepp Blatter, as the goals-per-game average slumped to 2.3, the second lowest ever in World Cup play.

As if to emphasize that this is the relentless reality of modern soccer, France and Italy put on a tedious final that featured only two goals, both of them scored from set plays, and had to be decided by resorting to the nonsense of a penaltykick shoot-out. In the end, it was a final that will be remembered for one thing only: the mad moment when Zidane’s lights went out and he drove his head brutally into Materazzi.

Zidane has since apologized to the world, hinting darkly and obscurely that he was unbearably insulted by the Italian. Ahah! Here come the lip-reading experts, who have been studying Materazzi’s mouth on the tapes. They have not come off well, these lip-readers, presenting a variety of conflicting versions of Materazzi’s words, suggesting he insulted just about everything available from Zidane’s wife, mother, sister, his whole family, Islam, terrorism, and that good old hackle-raising stand-by, sexual preference.

We do not know what Materazzi said, but does it matter? Surely everyone knows that all sports feature trash talk, and that a lot of it is pretty nasty. Even cricket — considered a gentlemanly pastime — features plenty of bad-mouthing, which the Australians call “sledging.”

FIFA seems to think that it does matter; it has summoned both Zidane and Materazzi to interviews, and on Thursday its Disciplinary Committee will “deal with the case” in special session behind closed doors.

If this all seems a bit excessive, I should point out that FIFA is in danger here of being hoist with its own petard. Two petards, actually. Firstly, FIFA has been pushing its “Say No To Racism” campaign heavily throughout the World Cup. Trash talk involving racism is banned, we all know that. But what about the mother-insults and the sexualdenigration — surely FIFA will not want to appear permissive in those areas?

Then there is the decidedly awkward fact that Zidane was voted tournament MVP. Blatter has hinted that FIFA may revoke Zidane’s award, an unheard-of move for a FIFA honor. But nothing has gone right for the sport in this poorly-played tournament. It is the sport itself — not the handing out of sponsored awards — that urgently needs careful study. The starting point is obvious, a small statistic with a vast significance — that melancholy goalsper-game figure: 2.3.

pgardner@nysun.com