Frankfurt - The Confederations Cup ended with a stunning Brazilian victory on Wednesday and Germany patted itself on the back for staging a relatively trouble-free dress rehearsal for the 2006 World Cup.
Yet while world soccer's governing body Fifa trumpeted the success of a once-maligned tournament that appears to have come of age, a few worries were left hanging in the air 12 months ahead of the main event.
Doping reared its ugly head when two Mexican players were sent home after failing a drugs test, raising fresh questions about football's approach to the problem.
And individual pitch invaders blighted four matches of the 16-game competition, giving the head of the World Cup organising committee, Franz Beckenbauer, a security headache.
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| Individual pitch invaders blighted four matches |
The drugs tests on Salvador Carmona and Aaron Galindo were carried out by the Mexican federation before the tournament.
To Fifa's embarrassment, the results were made public once the players had already taken part in group matches in Germany.
Fifa President Sepp Blatter admitted the Mexican doping cases were "unpleasant".
"The Mexican federation has not been doing a solid job," he added.
While the offenders would have received an automatic two-year ban in many sports, the cases of Carmona and Galindo, who are reported to have taken the steroid nandrolone, will be handled by the Mexican football federation.
| 'We must find a way to prevent this' |
Fifa will only intervene if it is unhappy with the conclusion of the investigation.
The case once again highlighted soccer's own interpretation of the rules set out by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Beckenbauer meanwhile promised a solution to the problem of individuals running on to the pitch - in the case of the Brazil against Germany semifinal in Nuremberg, a Spanish man admitted he had been paid for his stunt by a gambling website.
"They disturb the concentration of the players and they disrupt the match," Beckenbauer said.
"We must find a way to prevent this and we will find an answer."
The solution is however unlikely to involve fencing in the spectators.
Germany got a chance to give five of its newly built or extensively renovated stadiums a trial run.
The high-tech fabric roof which covers the pitch at Frankfurt's new Waldstadion sprang a leak during a storm which raged throughout Brazil's 4-1 victory over Argentina in the final, soaking photographers.
Horst Schmidt, Beckenbauer's number two on the World Cup committee, admitted the stadium was only completed shortly before the Confederations Cup and there had been no time to test the roof under extreme weather conditions.
Beckenbauer said the tournament was the perfect way to highlight problems and get them fixed.
"From the very start we said it was a test. We are not satisfied with the few hitches but it is better to do them this year because we have time to put things right," he said.
To the five venues used in the Confederations Cup - Cologne, Frankfurt Hannover, Leipzig and Nuremberg - seven more will be added for the World Cup, including the biggest stadiums in Dortmund, Munich and Berlin's Olympic Stadium which will host the final on July 9.
While eight teams played here, 32 will take part in the world's most-watched sports event. - Sapa-AFP
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