BERLIN, Dec 20: Want to avoid the World Cup next year? Eastern Germany could be the ideal destination. Germany will host the month-long tournament from June and organisers hope the celebrations will be spread across the reunited country.

Twenty-six of the 32 participating teams have already chosen their World Cup bases. None, however, will be in former communist East Germany.

True, the eastern city of Leipzig will be the scene of four opening-phase matches and a last-16 clash, but critics argue it is an oasis in a barren land.

The capital, in the east, will also stage five games including the final, as well as hosting the German national side, but this will all take place in former West Berlin.

Champions and favourites Brazil will be near Frankfurt, Argentina will be in northern Bavaria and France near Hamelin, famed for its rat-catching Pied Piper.

Rainer Milkoreit, director of the sports academy in eastern Bad Blankenburg, said Togo and Australia had expressed interest in coming, but the African newcomers will be by the Austrian border, while Australia will play only in southern Germany.

“It seems the east isn’t attractive for these teams. But it’s hard to understand. Many of our facilities are much more modern than those in the west,” Milkoreit said.

“It’s supposed to be a World Cup of united Germany, but that’s not recognised by the teams.”

The city of Magdeburg, whose local side won the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1974, was still holding out hope of attracting Angola or Ukraine.

Local media thought the eastern city had landed Ivory Coast earlier this month, but the African government official they referred to turned out to be a fraudster.

“Of course it is for the national football associations to decide,” said Rudiger Koch, Magdeburg council’s head of culture, said. “But I would personally find it regrettable if the new (eastern) states were not represented.”

The east has been a poor relation to the affluent west. More than one million people have moved out since reunification in 1990 and unemployment is almost double the level of that in the west despite billions of euros poured in to smarten up town centres and improve infrastructure.

The German football association has been keen that the east does not miss out on the economic and cultural benefits Germany’s hosting of the World Cup should bring.

A brochure sent to participating nations included an extensive list of 16 suggested locations in the eastern states.

City and hotel chiefs acknowledge that the bulk of the matches are in the west, concentrated around the Rhine and industrial Ruhr valleys, and that sporting contacts go back longer with western cities. Some also argue that certain cities have paid to attract high-profile teams.

“Most of the teams will land in Frankfurt, so the natural inclination may be to look around there and the Rhine area,” said Ulrich Wolter, head of the World Cup organisers’ office in Leipzig.

Christian Ehrlert of the Hotel Kloster Nimbschen in Grimma, said it would be a shame if the east missed out, but said the five games in nearby Leipzig were a definite plus.

“Whatever happens, 2006 will be a good year,” he said.

However, with six teams still to decide, Potsdam, effectively a suburb of Berlin but in the eastern state of Brandenburg, may be on the verge of scoring the first victory for an eastern city.

“We are in intensive talks. It’s a European nation. It’s 99 percent certain,” Hartmut Pirl, director of the city’s Seminaris SeeHotel said.—Reuters