Peter Corrigan: Ballack wins martyr of the match award

Such is the Germans' ability to do to a football match what a combine harvester does to a wheatfield, we can't be sure that they won't manufacture a steel-backed triumph in Yokohama today. But if there's any justice left in football, Brazil will win the World Cup. Not that Brazil are untarnished representatives of the forces of good – Rivaldo, the arch-simulator, has blackened their credentials in that respect – but their approach to the game is the one you would like to see acknowledged as the superior influence in this remarkable tournament.

If Germany win, there may be consolation in these islands that England (5-1 in Munich last year) and Wales (1-0 in Cardiff in May) would have registered recent victories against the world champions, but there are some straws not worth clutching.

My first reaction would contain the ghastly thought of the acclaim winging Michael Ballack's way. Ballack isn't playing today but he is already a hero after his significant contribution to getting his team into the final.

You may remember that in their semi-final against South Korea, Ballack first came to prominence when he took the legs of Lee Chun-Soo from behind as the Korean was about to run the ball into the German penalty area. It was a bad foul, Ballack's scything legs were well out of range of the ball, and the referee Urs Meier had no hesitation in booking him. He had grounds to send him off so dangerous was Chun-Soo's run.

As it was, Ballack already had one yellow card from a previous match so he automatically missed the next game, which is today's final. Four minutes later, Ballack slipped his marker for the first time in the game and met Oliver Neuville's cross with a right-footed shot that was brilliantly parried by Lee Woon-Jae. Ballack met the rebounding ball with his left to score an excellent goal.

After the game, however, Germany's coach Rudi Völler seemed more eloquently impressed with Ballack's ability to cheat than to score a goal. I've read the following words from Völler over and over again and I still find them incredible. "He [Ballack] knew he would miss the final but he still committed a tactical foul that was absolutely necessary," said Völler. "If he had not done that, they might have scored. It was a sacrifice for his country and the whole of Germany will applaud him."

What if Germany proceed to win the World Cup, will Ballack be elevated to martyr status? Will he win the Foul of the Century award? Will he ride in triumph through the cheering streets of Munich holding Chun-Soo's left leg aloft? In putting this extraordinary piece of lauded illegality forward as one of the reasons for not wanting Germany to win today, I realise that I could be accused of ignoring Rivaldo's solid claims as a contender for top cheat.

Rivaldo managed to get Turkey's Hakan Unsal sent off by pretending he'd been hit in the face when Unsal kicked the ball at his thigh. The Brazilian introduced an element of mangled morality into the defence of his action by stating that he was merely ensuring that his opponent would be punished for what was a violent act wherever the ball struck him.

No such defence was viable when Rivaldo performed his face-clutching act after a harmless collision with Sol Campbell in the England game. It may be some mitigation that neither incident affected the outcome of a game but it leaves an unpleasant taste. Unlike Germany, Brazil stopped short of giving Rivaldo a standing ovation for his misdeeds but one wonders how long it is before kids on Rio's fabled Copacabana beach start adding to their skills the art of dropping opponents in the shit.

It may seem naïve to complain about an attitude that has been present in professional football for many years. Only the other week, David Beckham admitted that he would assist his country's cause if the rules needed bending.

We know that rugby union players feel the same because we had the recent example of Neil Back whose illegal act in tapping the ball out of the hands of the Munster scrum-half at a vital moment in the Heineken Cup final has been accepted with a shrug by the authorities.

They wouldn't condone the use of banned drugs so why would they accept deliberate rule-breaking? They may argue that punishment exists for players who break the laws of the game but if they are so willing to continue to sin it is obvious that the punishment is insufficient. Fifa took action against Rivaldo but the decision to fine him a derisory £5,000 – as someone commented, his necklace was probably worth more than that – just about sums up how seriously they consider such flagrant breaches.

To be fair to Fifa, they did come into this World Cup intent on clamping down on certain "crimes" like simulation and shirt-tugging. Many culprits were apprehended. Video replays revealed that a bigger number got away with it. We will judge the seriousness of Fifa's intent on whether they use the video evidence to follow up their clampdown by issuing warnings to offenders spotted by the cameras.

If there wasn't an outstanding football lesson to be learnt from this World Cup, it was packed with evidence that we have a way to go before we stamp out attitudes that are ultimately damaging to the game's integrity. I had hoped that when Fifa met in Japan on Friday, they would announce that they would study one or two reforms, such as the in-game use of video evidence, that would assist the fairness of the game and the correctness of decisions. Later, perhaps.

Blend it like Blatter?

Now that Sepp Blatter has secured his position as Fifa president, the British "home" countries are fearful he will seek revenge for our not supporting his re-election by leading a campaign to force us into blending into one Great Britain team. It is not a prospect that dismays me too much, but that's another argument. What is sad is that our football associations are using this perceived threat to deny permission for our women footballers to enter the Olympics under the GB title.

We have to accept that the first priority of sports administrators is self- preservation but there is also an inconvenient duty to the development of the game and the advance of women's football in this country is such that it is criminal to deny them the opportunity to play at Olympic level.

Our quivering blazer-wearers claim that to allow this would give Blatter the precedent he is seeking. This is utter nonsense because a precedent already exists. We used to send a GB men's team to the Olympics (Matt Busby coached one of them). With countries like Yugoslavia having fragmented, the idea that he could force us to combine is as ridiculous as the fact that we're running scared of him.

Suspicious mind games

Senior Test cricketers throughout the world will have little reason to thank Lord Condon, head of the game's Anti- Corruption unit, this weekend. He has just branded them all as match-fixers.

Well, he didn't exactly brand them all. He told an ICC meeting at Lord's on Thursday that cricketers who have tried to fix matches are still playing. "There are a small number of players who, in an ideal world, would not be playing now," he said.

Presumably, the reason they are still playing is that he hasn't got enough evidence against them. In which case, how can he be so sure they are guilty? And by not giving any indication of who they are or which countries they play for he is not just damning them he is damning every Test cricketer who was playing a few years ago.

Wouldn't it have been better for him to say nothing? All he has managed to do is remind us of an episode we would prefer to forget and cast suspicions that all but a few leading players don't deserve.