The one-month span of the World Cup, beginning June 9 and going to July 9, will no doubt seem like 720 hours of non-stop soccer. In fact, only about 90 of those hours will be taken up by playing time, which gives FIFA and the German organizers plenty of time to worry about other matters.

Sex, for starters. The Saudi Arabians have chosen the Hotel Dolce in Bad Nauheim as their base, a decision that has prompted a good many changes at the hotel. The pictures of naked women in the health spa have been removed, the hardcore television channels have been disconnected, and all the alcohol is gone from the minibars.

“The whole staff is taking cross cultural training sessions to make them aware of the differences between Germany and Saudi Arabia,” hotel manager Michel Prokop told Reuters. “To avoid problems, all women staffers are going to wear trousers instead of dresses.”

But Bad Nauheim’s restrained and tasteful preparations hardly reflect the national atmosphere in a country where prostitution is legal. An estimated one million foreign visitors will be in Germany for the World Cup. That many of these will be young, unaccompanied males has not escaped the notice of the German sex industry. “Soccer and prostitution are a great match,” Hans-Henning Schneidereit, who runs the Safari Cabaret in Hamburg’s famous red-light district of St Pauli, said. He expects a 30% rise in business.

Surveys have revealed an army of some 400,000 full- and part-time prostitutes in Germany, but there are fears that this figure does not include women – particularly from East Europe – who are forced into prostitution. From Sweden – a World Cup qualifier and a country where prostitution is not legal – has come an appeal for the Germans to take strong measures against trafficking in women. But the Swedish soccer federation rejected a suggestion from the country’s equal opportunity ombudsman that it withdraw from the tournament.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter has made sure that his organization is correctly positioned on the issue. “FIFA places great importance on respecting … the physical integrity of human beings,” he said. But Blatter also pointed out that his organization has no power to halt forced prostitution.

An area where FIFA has taken action is gambling – a highly sensitive issue in Germany since last year’s scandal involving a corrupt referee linked to a gambling chain. FIFA is requiring all 736 players involved in the World Cup to sign a declaration that neither they nor members of their families will bet on World Cup games.

Meanwhile, the German organizers have survived an alarm raised by a consumer’s organization claiming that some of the World Cup stadiums did not meet safety requirements. But there remains a threat by German rail workers – protesting the privatization of the state-owned system – to stage strikes during the World Cup.

The biggest headache, of course, is security. Not only against international terrorism, but to counter soccer’s own terrorists – the marauding bands of violent fans. Once primarily an English phenomenon, soccer hooligans now hail from many countries. Dire threats of mayhem have come from Poland, where, Der Spiegel reported, hooligans were determined to show the world they were every bit as nasty as their English or German counterparts.

The Italian daily La Repubblica has quoted an Italian member of the violent ultra fans who follow the AS Roma club as calling for an all-out war on Muslims: “We are united. For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre … in Germany there will be Turks, Algerians, and Tunisians. The Turks, we can’t stand them … they are Islamic terrorists.”

British police have been cooperating with their German counterparts, and 40 British policemen will travel to Germany along with an expected 100,000 English fans. Remaining behind in England will be 3,800 known troublemakers whose passports have been confiscated for the duration of the World Cup.

The Mayor of Frankfurt, where England plays its first match, has expressed confidence that all will be well. Up in Hamburg, where England will not be playing, they’ve built a temporary hooligan jail to hold up to 150 prisoners.

England, likely to pose the biggest hooligan problem, is also, along with America, considered a major terrorism risk. Security will be intense at the two teams’ camps. The American decision to stay in a downtown hotel in Hamburg will not make matters any easier for the Germans.

German defense minister Franz Josef Jung has announced that AWACS planes will patrol the German skies, but that security will be enforced by the police, not the army. Nonetheless, as many as 7,000 troops will be on call in case of an emergency.

But the Germans are anxious to avoid such militaristic talk. The tournament has the theme “A Time to Make Friends,” and has also launched a $3.5 million charm campaign because, as tournament director Franz Beckenbauer put it, “We are unfortunately not perceived as a particularly friendly people – we have to improve on that.”

The German tourism board has prepared kits for taxi companies, hotels, airports, stations, restaurants, and travel agents setting out ways to be charming to foreign visitors.

Non-smokers, however, will not be charmed. Smoking will be permitted in the stadiums, a step back from the 2002 tournament in Japan and South Korea, when it was banned. But wild all-night parties will be in order, as the authorities say they won’t enforce laws that generally ban rowdiness after 10 p.m.

Of course, you can’t please everyone. Baerbel Hoehn, a Green Party politician, has questioned security – not against terrorism or hooliganism, but against avian flu, because the feared H5N1 virus strain has already appeared in Germany. But Hoehn has a solution for the World Cup and all the problems that it brings: “I would be tempted to say let us be cautious and call it off.”

pgardner@nysun.com