Fifa World Cup 2010: Festival of happy feet

This World Cup has been an enjoyable tournament but not yet an epic one. South Africa 2010 will always be remembered for the wonderful fans, and for how the hosts laid on a magical party from Cape Town to Durban, Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg, but it desperately needs a memorable final to be considered a truly stellar event.

Splashes of colour have enlivened the Fifa canvas, the exuberance of Ghana and the red verve of Spain, the counter-attacking of Holland and the youthful energy of Germany, but the organisers' cold statistics reveal the paucity of goals, particularly when placed in historical context.

After the nadir of Italia 90, when the average was 2.21 goals per game, the lowest ever, USA 94 saw the average rise to 2.71 but it has declined steadily ever since. France 98 saw 2.67, Japan/South Korea 2.52 and Germany 2.30. (The peak was 5.38 in Switzerland in 1954). With two games remaining, the tally is 139, the average is 2.24 and eight goals are required to reach the 147 of 2006.

Everybody hopes that Germany and Uruguay lay on a feast of goals in the third-place game and that Spain and Holland live up to their attacking reputations in the final.

If both games squeeze out only two goals then South Africa 2010 will statistically be the worst World Cup for goals ever. The Jabulani ball can expect another kicking. Even if the numbers tell one story, the happy narrative of the past few weeks makes it seem like a superior World Cup.

It may not last, and greater minds than a football journalist's will doubtless examine the real legacy of this special event to a remarkable but flawed country, but everyone can see that this World Cup has bequeathed hope. Off the pitch, the winners are South Africa.

On the pitch, the tournament has not been graced by a superstar, certainly no one to compare with a Diego Maradona in 1986 or Ronaldo in 2002.

This has been the tournament of the team, of well-coached units like Holland and Spain, Germany and Uruguay. It has been the World Cup of tactics, of systems like 4-2-3-1, of young ideas and the death of old teams like England, France and Italy, who seemed to think they had entered a Veterans' competition. On Friday, Fifa's Technical Study Group released the 10-strong list of candidates for the Golden Ball and even the serially cantankerous would struggle to take issue with nine. Wesley Sneijder has been elegantly effective in compiling his five goals for Holland, matching the return of David Villa, such a threat when cutting in from Spain's left. Two others, Diego Forlan and Asamoah Gyan, also play with a smile, dynamism and eye for goal.

Ball as a friend

Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Mesut Ozil have treated the ball as a friend, ushering it towards friendly feet in the danger zone. Bastian Schweinsteiger has been liberated by Michael Ballack's unfortunate injury and charged between boxes. Like Sneijder, the pacy, technical Arjen Robben will test Spain. But Lionel Messi? The main plotline of this 2010 drama is that the leading lights, Messi and Kaka, Ronaldo and Rooney, have not shone.

Messi has sparkled in parts but he is not deserving of top 10 status, particularly when Thomas Muller has been limited to the young player category. Muller ripped England and Messi's Argentina apart. Muller's exclusion must be to do with his one-game suspension for two innocuous offences.

What about the other five when he excelled? Sensibly, Fifa now allows the media to wait until the final whistle in Soccer City before casting votes for best player, so preventing Golden Balls-ups when the honour was bestowed on the headbutting Zinedine Zidane in 2006, the vanquished Oliver Kahn in 2002 and the exhausted Ronaldo in 1998. Xavi, Villa and Sneijder appear the main candidates and a bravura display from one in Soccer City will surely seal a World Cup winner's medal and the best player trophy.

Flashback: The 18 previous finals