FRANKFURT, Germany – Shortly after scoring the winning goal in England’s second-round game against Ecuador, David Beckham leaned forward and threw up on the field.

A nauseating image that, aptly enough, has been televised ad nauseam, usually accompanied by witty comments, the favorite one being to link Beckham’s revulsion to the quality of the soccer being played in this World Cup.

True, the soccer so far has not been very good. Fifty-six games have been played, only eight are left. On the usual 1-to-10 scale, I’d give the soccer an entertainment value of 4.0. Another 4.0 for tactical innovation, and yet another 4.0 for personalities.

Two questions thrust themselves forward: Where are the goals? And where are the stars?

Goals? Now here’s a curious situation. Before the tournament, adidas introduced its new ball, the Teamgeist. We were asked to believe, as we are every four years as a new World Cup miracle ball is unveiled, that this was a very special ball, that players could practically make this one sit up and talk – “The ball goes exactly where you want it to go,” Beckham said. We also got the usual fatuous statements from goalkeepers – “Unpredictable” was Jens Lehmann’s complaint, while England keeper Paul Robinson moaned that it was “goalkeeper unfriendly.” For D.C. United goal keeper Troy Perkins the ball is “a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. There’s going to be a lot of goals when the World Cup starts.”

To put the record straight, this World Cup is averaging 2.36 goals a game. If that figure does not improve, Germany ’06 will go down as the second lowest scoring ever, behind the 2.21 of Italia ’90.

Forget about the threatened goalglut then. As for tactics, FIFA long ago gave up on seeing anything new in that area. After every World Cup, FIFA issues a technical report, compiled by a group of expert coaches. It has become a standard feature of those reports to include a phrase along the lines of, “On the tactical side, there was not a lot that was new.”

There are no new tactics in soccer; arguably the last tactical event that could qualify as “new” was the Dutch total soccer of the early 1970s. Since then, a slow realization has dawned that the formations are primarily of theoretical interest, and that they tend to get changed around so much during the course of a game that they provide an unreliable guide to the events on the field.

Coaches, though – and soccer theorists in general – remain remarkably reluctant to take the next step, and emphasize the crucial role of the skills of individual players. In this area there is always something new, some exciting young player, or some ageless old master to excite us.

But maybe not this time. Looking at the eight teams now remaining in contention, it is difficult to name a truly outstanding performer. Brazil has yet to get a dominating performance from any one of its formidable attacking quintet of Ronaldinho, Kaka, Ronaldo, Adriano, and Robinho. Indeed, it is arguable that Brazil’s top player so far has been Lucio, a defender.

Ronaldo produced the most emotionally charged moment of the tournament so far when he scored his 15th World Cup goal, against Ghana, to surpass Gerd Muller’s former record. It was a moment of history that some 65,000 fans rose to applaud. – then they sat back down and Brazil sank back into what has seemed at times an almost lethargic rhythm.

Brazil has not excited as it was expected to do. Ukraine was never expected to excite, nor was it expected to get this far, and it did so only after beating Switzerland in an appallingly boring 0-0 overtime tie that needed a shoot-out to resolve matters. France, England, and Portugal are ordinary teams muddling through without having played anything more stirring than effective soccer.

Italy, as seems always to be the case at this stage of big competitions, is lurking, but is yet another team that has given us nothing memorable so far. But it faces Ukraine, the weakest of the quarterfinalists, and seems almost guaranteed a semifinal place.

The other two quarterfinalists, Germany and Argentina, meet in Berlin tomorrow, and both are committed to attacking soccer. But beyond that similarity, this is a clash of contrasts – of the straightforward hard-running European style against the more intricate passing style of the South Americans, and of the big guys against the little guys. The average height of the German team is 6 feet, while that of Argentina is 5-foot-10 – an advantage of 2 inches to the Germans.

But is it an advantage? Hugo Tocalli, the Argentine assistant coach dismisses the size factor. “We don’t think about. We didn’t select our players on the basis of size. We took who we think are best, and at the moment so many of the best attacking players in Argentina are short, all around 5-foot-6-inches tall – Javier Saviola, Lionel Messi, Carlos Tevez. But it is not a worry to us to face bigger teams.”

The Argentine trio named by Tocalli contains one player – Messi – who is eligible for the new FIFA Best Young Player award. Initially, 40 players born on or after January 1, 1985, were eligible, but the list is now much shorter, as most of the candidates have either not played or failed to do anything noteworthy.

With only eight games left in the tournament, the award is still up for grabs, but the number of candidates is down to four: Messi, Germany’s Lukas Podolski, Portugals’ Cristiano Ronaldo, and England’s Wayne Rooney. The favorite must be Podolski, who has already scored three times for Germany.

That only four players should be in the running for the award is disappointing. But the shortage of outstanding youngsters parallels the lack of outstanding performances by more senior players.

It is getting late, and this World Cup still awaits its star. The four youngsters have time for break-out performances, but it could well be that it is an old-timer who comes out on top, the sly old veteran, the one they keep calling fat and slow … Ronaldo. He showed us all, with his record-breaking goal, that he can still turn on the magic and bring a packed stadium roaring to its feet.

pgardner@nysun.com