HAMBURG – The eight games played thus far in the 2006 FIFA World Cup have ranged from the ordinary to the superbly exciting, with most of them falling short of the entertainment value their pricey tickets ought to guarantee.

There will be few complaints from German fans, whose team got the show off to a rip-roaring start with a comprehensive 4-2 flaying of Costa Rica. Germany’s much criticized coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, has been smiling ever since, but there is still the feeling that this will be a short-lived smile.

Truth be told, the Germans did not play particularly well against a weak opponent. Two of the German goals were superb long range shots, the sort of shots that go in maybe once every hundred tries – not exactly flukes, but the Germans will not be scoring many more times like that. But they may well be giving up more goals like the couple that Paolo Wanchope scored against them – the result of deftly timed movement that brutally exposed the physical (and indeed, the mental) slowness of the German defenders.

For the moment, the Germans sit atop Group A and will almost certainly win it. Not least because of a pathetic showing by Poland, which was beaten 2-0 by Ecuador in the other Group A game. The Poles were supposed to be the big threat to Germany, but on this showing they have little to offer but clumsiness and slowness. Ecuador, without ever playing outstanding soccer, was too quick and too clever.

England, one assumes, will win Group B, but if all its crowing and boasting about winning the whole thing is to become reality, its play will have to look a whole lot better than it did in a labored 1-0 win over Paraguay in the debut game. This was mediocre stuff – even England’s lone goal was scored for them, an own goal by Paraguayan defender Carlos Gamarra. David Beckham did his best – for once he was the best of the English – but midfielders Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard and striker Michael Owen turned in pallid performances. The English have since made a big thing about the heat and how they needed to be allowed more drinks, with implied criticism that the referee – the Mexican Marco Rodriguez – stopped them from refreshing themselves.

Yes, it was hot in Frankfurt, but no complaints have been heard from the Paraguayans. There were fears that things would get even hotter there, because the presence of tens of thousands of English fans always raises the specter of hooliganism. Not a sign of it this time … can it be that the traveling English fan has at last managed to shed his violent image? The proof will come when the good behavior continues after an England defeat.

But such a defeat does not look likely in the first round. Sweden, supposedly the big threat to England in Group B, opened play against Trinidad & Tobago, everyone’s vote for the weakest team here. The final score of 0-0 was even more embarrassing than it sounds, for T&T had defender Avery John (a player who does not even hold down a starting spot in MLS’s New England Revolution) ejected at the beginning of the second half.

At that point, around 8 p.m. on Saturday night, four games had been played, none of them exactly a big deal. That all changed with the following game in Hamburg between Argentina and Ivory Coast. Superb is the all-purpose adjective here – superb occasion, atmosphere, sportsmanship, and, above all, soccer skills. Argentina, the old masters, twice world cup winners, against the upstarts from Africa – Ivory Coast playing in its very first world cup. But what a fright the Africans gave Argentina! In a packed stadium that seemed to magnify the crowd roar to an almost unbearable supersonic-jet pitch, the Argentines scored twice in the first half. Firstly from a ball bouncing loose in front of the Ivory Coast goal, the sort of ball that a true goal-scorer relishes – Hernan Crespo saw it first, got to it quicker than anyone, 1-0 Argentina.

Fourteen minutes later, the Argentine soccer soared from the superb to the sublime. Midfielder Roman Riquelme – the one so often criticized as too slow, too thoughtful for the modern game – received the ball, took one quick look, and sent a swift ground ball slashing between the Ivory Coast defenders. Racing to meet it from one direction was Javier Saviola, from the other came Ivory Coast goalkeeper Jean-Jacques Tizie. But the winner of that race had already been decided by the accuracy of Riquelme’s pass – the ball was delivered exactly where Saviola could reach it before Tizie. One confident flick of Saviola’s right foot was all it took, and the ball was swept past Tizie and rolling into the empty net. It took all of five seconds, but it was five seconds of soccer perfection, a really special goal.

And Argentina needed perfection on this electrifying night, for Ivory Coast replied by switching to all-out attack. Midfielders Kater Keida and Kanga Akale were replaced by forwards Arouna Kone and Aruna Dindane, meaning coach Henri Michel now had four forwards on the field. The orange-shirted Ivory Coast players surged forward, keeping the Argentines penned back on defense. They got their thoroughly deserved goal at the 82nd minute, scored by the magnificent Didier Drogba. The Ivory Coast onslaught continued, but the Argentine defenders – notably the 33-year-old Roberto Ayala – held on.

So Argentina, with three points, lead the Group of Death, having scored one more goal than the Netherlands, 1-0 victors over Serbia & Montenegro. The Dutch were worth their win, but the game itself was a tasteless affair compared to the soccer banquet spread out by Argentina and Ivory Coast.

In Group D the enigmatic Mexicans started poorly against Iran, but their ability to play high-level soccer – if only in short sequences – saw them through 3-1, two of the goals coming from Omar Bravo. Bravo’s second goal, was a mini-version of Saviola’s strike for Argentina – a short ball from Zinha, that Bravo, on the run, touched past goalkeeper Ebrahim Mirzapour.

In the other Group D game, it was Portugal 1 Angola 0 – an expected win for the Portuguese, but their inability to build on a fourth-minute goal from Pauleta had their own fans whistling and jeering.

Half the 32 teams have now been in action, and all four seeded teams – Germany, England, Argentina and Mexico – have won their games. There have been no upsets – though one could perhaps count Ecuador’s 2-0 win over Poland as surprising.

Today, the Americans open their campaign in Gelsenkirchen against the Czech Republicm, a team that, according to its press releases – has suffered a plague of injuries to all of its key players. Yet the likelihood is that Jan Koller, Pavel Nedved, Milan Baros and Tomas Rosicky will play. The Americans are all fit and have been allowed extraordinary freedom by coach Bruce Arena to stroll about in downtown Hamburg: “They’re men not kids,” said Arena, “I don’t see my job as making up rules and sitting in the hotel lobby checking on curfew and all that crap.”

One coach who has felt it necessary to protect his players is Australia’s Guus Hiddink, who says he is very angry that his team is being portrayed as dirty. Australia plays Japan today, and Hiddink believes that a statement by the president of the Japan Soccer Federation Saburo Kawabuchi that “Australia commit a lot of dirty fouls, they aim for the ankles a lot” is designed to sway the decisions of the Egyptian Essam Abd El Fatah who will referee the game.

Little has been heard from the Croatians, but they will get their day in the sun when they play their first game tomorrow. This is a game that will be followed avidly all over the world, for it is also the first game for the hot favorites Brazil. And how can a world championship really be under way until Brazil has entered the fray?