Tom Humphries argues that it wasn't the greatest tournament ever, but we will see it as a watershed. Things will change.

Another one put to bed. The first jointly-hosted World Cup. The first World Cup almost to be annexed by football's Third World. The last World Cup of the crazy broadcast rights era. We won't view it as the greatest tournament ever conducted, but we will see it as a watershed. Things will change.

Yesterday's final brought things to a satisfactory conclusion. The dominant personalities of the tournament came face-to-face in a final which was ironically an all blueblooded affair. Oliver Kahn facing down Ronaldo and the three Rs attack of Brazil was a spectacle worth waiting for. Kahn's simple mistake was an astonishing twist. Finals often sink below the level of the tournament which preceded them. This one was a nice grace note to finish on.

Lots to consider. Football perhaps has outgrown its most gleaming showcase. More teams than ever before entered this competition when it began two years ago, and as Brazil and Germany played in Yokohama yesterday for the right to be called best in the world the teams ranked 201st and 202nd in the world, Montserrat and Bhutan, were battling it out on a bumpy grass patch to see who is the worst in the world.

The gap in quality between the two spectacles was huge, but more and more of the world's soccer outposts are developing and, as a fragmented Europe begins to teem with contenders, there is increasingly a case for more African and Asian sides to be given places at the big table every four years.

How FIFA copes with that goes to the core of the traditional tensions between what is right and what is commercially lucrative. The weight of broadcast money still resides here in the old world. When that changes, and only when that changes, will we see a World Cup which reflects the footballing world.

After a final which was a clash on one level between Germany and Brazil but on another between Nike and adidas (with referee PierLuigi Collina being another paid adidas man), some rein needs to be placed on the commercial avarice which surrounds the competition. Needs to be? It's like telling the Koreans that they should do away with the rainy season. Ironic, though, that the adidas team were undone perhaps by the treacherous bounciness of the new adidas fevernova football.

It seems likely that the game of football is entering an era of straitened circumstance.

The crazy money which broadcasters have been willing to throw at the sport is beginning to dry up. FIFA flirted with catastrophe with the Kirch affair, in England the Nationwide league has taken water on board with the ITV digital collapse. Both are symptoms of a new reality. Television, upon whose generosity football has nourished and fattened itself, is no longer going to provide. As such, one suspects that in FIFA's offices the great private disappointment of the last month will have been the relatively abject failure of the Chinese side. Having attempted to hook America and failed, China remains the last great market to be conquered. FIFA needed to spread a little fever there.

Greed also impacted on the finals in the form of the fatigued and emaciated forms of some of the greatest players in the world who arrived in Asia jaded and carrying injuries, and in most cases left it early and suffering criticism. There seems little doubt that the European season is too long and too taxing and that attempts to shorten it will only be exploited by team owners to run their players down with lucrative tours of foreign countries.

We are entering a time of salary capping. Perhaps with that should come a limit on the number of games a player can play in a season and some strengthening of the rules concerning a nation's claim on its players.

This World Cup was a once off in several ways. The joint hosting arrangement between two countries with very little time for each other was novel and threw up an orgy of excess which in a way marks the end of the good times like the last days of the Roman Empire marked the end of that era. Twenty stadiums, each more lovely and eye-catching than the last, each built to host three World Cup games and then to be left to the Japanese and Korean leagues which draw on average 16,000 spectators (J League) and 3,000 spectators (K League) respectively. Football has never known such good times.

The stories of the tournament have been told again and again and they have become the themes. Ronaldo's journey back from the various levels of hell he has visited. Kahn's greatness diminished by a glitch. The Korean journey towards uninhibited celebration. The emergence of Senegal and their sexy, rhythmic football.

The World Cup remains the greatest sporting occasion on earth. There is such romance in the notion of so many journeys, so many matches all leading to one final game in Yokohama. So many countries whose journey ends somewhere along the way.

When we travelled to the Amsterdam Arena in autumn 2000 we scarcely believed that Mick McCarthy would still have his job that Christmas. When Mick celebrated that night's draw and Roy Keane mourned the surrender of a victory, we had no idea how or when they would collide publicly again. And if you put all the stories of the 2002 World Cup together, Roy and Mick's takes would be two tiny strands.

199 teams entered this World Cup. It took 839 matches to play from start to finish. Turkey scored the fastest ever goal on Saturday. A guy called Archie Thompson scored 13 goals for Australia in one qualifier. Abdel Hamid of Egypt scored a hat-trick in 177 seconds against Namibia. Almost 18 million people attended games. That's a lot of stories.

Mostly they are about people. One of the great pleasures and reliefs of the last few weeks was the absence of menace from the English fans, whose antics in 1998 threatened to squeeze the joy from the French World Cup. Here the English made friends easily and were adored by their Japanese hosts. It sat well with the great carnival atmosphere which has come to distinguish these occasions.

There is something precious about the notion of the World Cup and the notion of 40 billion people watching it. Nothing else bar horror and catastrophe unites us in quite the same way. Last night it was possible to look around the International Stadium in Yokohama and see the colours or flags of about 20 of the competing nations mingled with the dominant favours of the competing sides. Fans mixed together happily, the drums and the horns played and a microcosm of the hold which a simple game has on so many imaginations was clear. It was lovely to experience.

There will be changes, but they should be small. The World Cup has grown to just the right size. The groups are competitive, the mix of people is global and the tournament is more compelling than ever. The tournament came down in the end to one man, a global icon in himself. It was sweet and right that Ronaldo should have written his name all over the closing credits.

On to Germany in four years with cautious optimism.