It would not be a World Cup if there were not complaints about ticketing and about touts.
Officially, this World Cup is a sell-out. Unofficially, there are empty seats, and there are frustrated fans who want to occupy those seats.
In Frankfurt for England versus Paraguay, the stadium of nearly 50,000 was 90 per cent full of England fans. Given that the Football Association only received an allocation of 5,000 tickets for the match, there was clearly something amiss.
Outside, tickets were changing hands for about £300. Often, the ticket bore the name of a World Cup sponsor or, in at least one case, the Frankfurt Police Department. The touts, less conspicuous, are still making good money.
Over in Nuremberg, tickets for this afternoon's England-Trinidad and Tobago match are also selling for £300. England fans will again occupy 90 per cent of the stadium.
It gives credence to the view of the Football Association that England should be given more tickets than most other nations because England fans travel in larger numbers and are prepared to pay more for their tickets.
At the Holland-Serbia and Montenegro match in Leipzig last Sunday, nearly 2,000 seats were unoccupied. These seats were reserved for sponsors, yet it is clear that the ticket owners had more interesting things to do with their time. Meanwhile, outside the stadium, spectators wishing to watch the match live were told that it was a sell out.
Some fans have decided to take more unorthodox routes into stadiums. I spoke to at least three England fans who gained access to the match against Paraguay in Frankfurt without tickets. It was, one said, easy because the turn-stile operators are so interested in checking people's bags for sharp objects and other security risks that they are not checking tickets properly.
The ubiquitous green tickets, which have computer chips with information about the owner, are heavy and thick and not easy to forge. They have the name of the owner, or sponsor, written on the face of the ticket.
Officially, if the name on the ticket does not correspond to the person trying to gain access, that person will be refused admission. But Fifa, the game's world governing body, has already admitted that a small percentage of people, perhaps one per cent, are having their tickets checked.
Organisation outside the stadiums is already suspect and the bottleneck outside the Munich Arena for the opening match, with hundreds of people trying to get through just three security points, caused concern.
It is inconceivable that officials can check 50-odd thousand tickets for names and passport numbers just to stop somebody who, in any case, has paid a tout way over the odds just to be at the match. That, surely, is punishing the wrong person.
And, of course, Fifa hates seeing empty seats at World Cup matches. It is not good for business.
* I attended the USA-Czech Republic match on Monday with two American journalists, one of whom is making a documentary for the Fox Sports channel in Los Angeles. It is a documentary about why the World Cup transcends sport to become the longest and greatest party on earth.
The film-maker is Nick Webster, a friend of mine for a few years, and he is more famous than I first thought. On our entry into the stadium at Gelsenkirchen, American supporters would approach him, chant his name, ask for his autograph, ask to take his photograph, or offer to shake his hand.
Nick is living proof that Americans have finally got the point about soccer. If you know your soccer in America, you know Nick Webster. To some, he is even more famous than some members of the American team, who lost embarrassingly to the Czechs and are unlikely to survive the group phase.
There are, officially, only 5,000 Americans watching the World Cup in Germany. Unofficially, there must be four times as many here, all wearing outrageous outfits in a desperate attempt to remain on the World Cup bandwagon.
The United States have been competing at the World Cup since the first tournament, in Uruguay in 1930, but it was only in Korea four years ago that they actually looked as though they belonged. It is good for Nick. It means he gets to go to the World Cup every four years and continues to add to his fame.
And that, by extension, means that I am becoming famous. When one of Nick's admirers, a girl, realised that I was a friend and had been invited to Nick's wedding in Los Angeles last year, she asked for my photograph, too.
* The mark of a good team is one that can win without reaching peak performance. With that in mind, credit Brazil for winning their eighth successive World Cup match. Not since the 1998 World Cup final, when they lost horribly to France in Paris, have Brazil failed to win in the World Cup.
They won seven matches in Korea/Japan 2002 to win the tournament. Their 1-0 victory over Croatia in Berlin on Tuesday night meant they have extended the record they already held.
But what of France, who have not scored a World Cup goal since that 1998 final? Their goalless draw against Switzerland in Stuttgart on Tuesday afternoon means that they have failed to score in four successive matches.
Brazil might have been short of their best but we sense that they are ready to explode. France could be the most over-rated team in this tournament which, given the amount of overhyped teams, is a pretty impressive distinction.
Cafu, the Brazil captain who is being dogged by suggestions that he falsified official documents in Italy, is likely to set a World Cup record of his own.
He has now appeared in 14 World Cup victories in what is his fourth competition. If, as is likely, Brazil win two more matches and Cafu plays in them, he will overtake Lothar Matthaus and Wolfgang Overath, both of Germany, who each played in 15 victories.
Pele and Maradona, the two best players in the history of the game, finished their World Cup careers with 12 victories each.
* After attending the Germany-Poland match here in Dortmund last night, I prepared for my journey to Nuremberg for the England match against Trinidad and Tobago.
There is a private fear among officials in the Eastern German city that the less savoury members of the England fan club will use the location and the occasion to give Nazi salutes.
Nuremberg has an uneasy link to Nazi Germany, for it was there, in the 1930s, that the infamous rallies were staged.
Nuremberg is more than a city. It is a lesson in history.
