Locker Room: So it's over. Six weeks of rows, rumours, deadlines, strange beds and a little football.

Time perhaps for a reflective treatment of the World Cup as a global event, placing it within the context of the modern game and examining the undercurrents as regards corporatism, broadcast rights and general media influence, taking time to examine the problems of logistical giganticism and the problematic trade-off between nationalism and mere partisanship.

Or time, perhaps, for one of those lazy lists compiling the best and worst of everything. Listen, it's been six long weeks. Find your own context.

Best stadium: So many to choose from. The science of stadiums changes so quickly that there wasn't one here which didn't make our new and beloved Croke Park look chunky and outdated already. They rose and swept in beautiful, adventurous curves which mimicked the slopes of mountains or the arc of kites.

Most beautiful setting was Shizuoka, a brand new stadium planted in a forest on the side of a mountain with new laid lanes of blacktop highway ribboning up to it. Most beautiful building was the one where it all started for Ireland, Big Swan in Niigata, with its gorgeous curves rolling almost translucent in the afternoon light. Stunning.

Biggest red herring: There were shoals of them. Roy Keane "just walked into the Irish dressing-room" once or twice. There were walk-outs, bust-ups, showdowns and free- for-alls which just never happened.

Worst and most offensive though was the "Korea buying the referees" story embraced with particular ardour by Spain and Italy. Mistakes were made and they favoured the Koreans, but of all teams it was they who played the system the least. Not for them the professional fouling of Ballack or the theatrical writhing of Rivaldo or the lithe diving of Beckham or the intimidation of referees carried out by the Argentinians. The accusations put a sour taint on the best story of the World Cup.

Biggest hype: A haircut, a wife and a World Cup history that includes crucifixion. The stage was always set for David Beckham's redemption and he took his penalty against Argentina with aplomb. That's all though. No more aplomb. He was a better story than he was a player. The English media deified the kid, decided that he was the heart and soul of the team, their captain braveheart, etc, etc. Played poorly, but Eriksson, ever the media player, stuck with him.

Best game: It was a collection of lightweight games which we might classify as entertainments. The great epics, which require context, history and the intersection of two fine teams on the upwards curve, well, they were missing. England should have given us two classics but Argentina were poor in Sapporo and England were watery in Shizuoka. Brazil versus Costa Rica was perhaps the best diversion. Brazil versus Turkey perhaps the best match. Ireland versus Spain gets special mention for its great storyline.

BEST goal: Ho hum: Zinedine Zidane whetted our appetites with his classic in the European Cup final a couple of weeks before we opened the shop here. Nothing from the past few weeks compares with that moment of beauty. Best remembered perhaps will be two contributions from Ronaldinho.

His run from midfield and slipped pass to Rivaldo for the first Brazilian goal against England and then his impossibly cheeky free kick which will be fodder for David Seaman's nightmares even when he is old.

Best haircut: I have to go for Ronaldo here. That little triangle at the front. Was it a cry for help? Did the battery on the razor run out? Was it pointing the way for some dirigible overhead? Considering he only had a quarter inch or so of covering stubble when he began the haircut, the imagination, the desire to create, the sheer originality, clinches it.

Greatest Fans in The Wurreld: The Irish this time were all lawyers and biotech engineers and there was a cloying, sickly sweetness to the chants of Ooh Aah Kon-Ich-I-Wa which broke out in Yokohama. Sorry, but greatest fans of the tournament were the Koreans, where every single citizen from bank managers to hot dog vendors wore red "Be The Reds" T-shirts (nine-and-a-half million of same sold. Eat your greedy corporate heart out Nike!).

Second place to the Brazilians, who, as football enters the post-feminist era, prove there is a place for women in skimpy bikinis within modern football (look it's been six weeks, okay).

Best joke: Liam Mackay of the Irish Examiner's Zen Burger Joke in Japan. Make Me One With Everything.

Best moment: Has to be Robbie Keane triumphantly smuggling the ball past Oliver Kahn. For 90 minutes and a little bit longer Kahn had the qualities of a comic book character who could turn himself into a brick wall if needs be.

Biggest disappointment: The decision of so many Brazilian players to turn the private business of their religious belief into an occasion of ostentatious worship at the final whistle yesterday. The World Cup is bigger than that.

Best player: Yup, they were boring, mechanical and robotic. They dusted down every cliché that's ever been tailored for German football and made it fit them perfectly. Panzermannschaft. The Tank Team. They survived on a diet of one-nil wins and the odd professional foul. And yes, his one mistake of the tournament came at the worst possible time, but Oliver Kahn was Germany's crowning glory, the elemental force who pushed them to Yokohama. Pacing his area like a tiger, soaring over heads like an eagle.

Generally the king of the goalmouth jungle. Not often a goalie inspires and drives a team through a competition, but Kahn was special. Like the locks also.

Best goal celebration: The Senegalese score against France, drop a jersey at the corner flag and proceed to slowly gyrate over it in a manner so lascivious that the World Cup almost got banned in many fundamentalist countries. (The jury, whose decision is final, refuses to recognise all other goal celebrations involving the removal of jerseys.)

Worst Goal Celebration: I don't know. Gary Breen scores the best Irish goal of the tournament and posts his arm in the air like Alan Sniffer Clarke used to do. It hadn't imagination, but it made a respectful nod to the giants of the past. Besides, he's a centre half.

Not long later Damien Duff shapes for an extravaganza and takes a modest bow instead. Duffer, the award is yours.

Worst moment: Mick or Roy? Whatever way you came down, and coming down on either side wasn't an informed decision for any of us, some part of you has to have been made of stone if you can get over the image of Roy Keane's last morning in Saipan . Our greatest player and our most complex player mulling in his room while his squad, his friends, his colleagues and a few of his enemies packed and left for Japan and the big circus.

There would have been no big circus without Roy, and the thought of him in that room making arrangements on his own to get himself home, coming to terms with an enormous turning point in his life and doing it all without being interrupted by a friendly knock, well, that should stay with us all for a long time.