In case you missed it, Germany is hosting the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament. The World Cup is big. Bigger -- for the folks that live beyond U.S. borders, of which there are quite a few -- than the World Series. Bigger than the Super Bowl. Bigger than the Olympics. The World Cup is the world's biggest sporting event. And the Germans are hosting it. But I already said that.

The Germans, in case you missed it, have been in a foul mood the last several years. Slumping economy. High unemployment. Reunification. Reunification? Well, would you want your relatives to move in with you?

If there's one thing Germans can do, it's calculate. And they're calculating that the World Cup, the world's biggest sporting event, can help them get out of the dumps. It'll bring a lot of money into the country. It'll create a lot of jobs. It could also -- if Germany's national soccer team pulls off a miracle -- make Germans believe in themselves again, like the Miracle of Bern in 1954, when Germany's national soccer team, playing in the Swiss capital, beat heavily favored Hungary in the World Cup final. The victory gave them the feeling, after the whacking they got in the war, that "wir sind wieder wer" -- "we're somebodies again."

If there's another thing Germans can do, it's organize. That's good. It's good when a host is organized. Germans, however, are not exactly famous for being relaxed and cheerful. That's not good. A grumpy, uptight host, no matter how well organized, isn't very likely to throw a super party.

So what do you do? Well, for starters you make the World Cup logo three smiley faces. Three smiley faces? Three smiley faces. Marketing, my son, marketing -- that's what it's all about. Then you launch a friendliness campaign in the 12 German cities where matches will be played. "We won't get this opportunity again for another 50 years, so it's worth at least smiling for a few weeks," said "Kaiser" Franz Beckenbauer, German soccer's top banana and president of the 2006 World Cup Organizing Committee.

What did I say about calculating?

Anyhow, so far, so good. But on March 1, three months and eight days before kickoff, the wheels began to come off the wagon. In a friendly match in Florence against Italy, Germany's national soccer team flamed out 4-1. Five days later, the German team's coach, Jürgen "Klinsi" Klinsmann, a former German soccer star, didn't attend a workshop in Düsseldorf for coaches of the World Cup teams. Klinsmann had flown back to southern California, where he lives with his American wife and two kids.

That's when the liverwurst hit the fan. The Kaiser lit into his absentee coach. Fans began calling for his scalp. Some German lawmakers even demanded that he answer before parliament. Most serious of all, the flashy tabloid Bild Zeitung, Germany's top-selling newspaper, began to heap scorn on him.

More bad news on March 8. AC Milan beat Bayern Munich 4-1, kicking Germany's best soccer team out of the European Champions League competition.

The following week, German media reported that a player on Germany's national team had been implicated in the match-fixing scandal that has shaken German soccer since early last year. Things were quickly going from bad to worse. "It's about time the Germans stopped badmouthing everything before the World Cup, and started looking forward to this big international event." Thus spake, according to Der Spiegel's online edition, a Turkish soccer player in Germany's top league.

Der Spiegel, Germany's leading news magazine and frequent critic of its countrymen's gloominess, offered a gloomy assessment: "The World Cup, a major German effort at good cheer," it wrote last week, "is in danger of sinking into self-laceration and ill-humor." Did it say that Germans should be more laid-back, that they should open up and let some cheer into their lives, that soccer, after all, is just a game? "German life," Der Spiegel pronounced -- some Wagner music, bitte -- "is reflected in German soccer." The significance of the World Cup for Germany "mustn't be underestimated."

Uh-oh.

Maybe it's all that southern California sunshine. But blond, oft-smiling Klinsmann, now mocked as "Grinsi-Klinsi" by the riled-up Bild Zeitung, doesn't see things so fraught with dire portent. "My personal happiness doesn't depend on the World Cup," the paper quoted him as saying, adding: "But the well-being of an entire nation does!"

Smiley, anyone?