LONDON -- Now for the really big story -- and Japan is at the center of it. But the focus this time is not on dreary economics but on soccer. With the curtain rising on the great drama of the Japan/South Korea-hosted World Cup, all eyes and world media attention are beamed on the teams, the players, the coaches, the fans, the matches, the pitches, the logos and all the rest.

The past 10 years have seen a geometrical expansion of media and public interest in the soccer world -- at least in Europe. America, of course, has its own brand of soccer and is widely regarded as a baseball nation -- as was Japan until recently. But the rest of the planet has been more or less conquered by soccer, and with the massive public support has come equally massive flows of cash and investment.

Soccer, with all sports-related industries spun off it, is now a multibillion-dollar world. Its personalities are global celebrities. In the old days, attention used to be focused on the actual teams and the star players on them. Now the spotlight turns not just on teams and who is picked for them, but also on the squads from which the teams are picked, how they come to be chosen and, above all, the team coaches and managers, formerly near-anonymous figures who have become headline material.