BERLIN - A dozen yards in front of every soccer goal sits the intersection of crime and punishment. It's called the penalty spot, and it's where World Cup dreams often go to die.

With only the consolation and championship matches remaining in this monthlong tournament, attackers have cashed in an even dozen penalty kicks out of 16 awarded by referees during open play ¡ª as opposed to the postgame shootouts used to break ties.

That's about one for every five games, only slightly above the average since the World Cup began in 1930, and every one provoked a vintage Bobby Knight-caliber meltdown from coaches and players on both sides. More than half were precious enough to decide the outcome of games, and the two biggest, perhaps not coincidentally, were gifted to France and Italy, who meet in Sunday night's final.

Zinedine Zidane converted the latest one to provide the only goal as Les Bleus leapfrogged Portugal 1-0 in Wednesday night's semifinals. The most dramatic saw the Azzurri's Francisco Totti bang home the game-winner from the same spot during injury time against Australia in the knockout round.

Both will be forever famous, or infamous, depending on where one calls home.

"We are a small country," Portuguese coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said afterward, still incensed by the injustice of it all. "It's hard."

"We play all our lives to be honest on the pitch and to work hard," Australia's Tim Cahill said after the Italy match, "and I suppose these days you fall over on the pitch and get a penalty. ... It's disappointing."

"Disappointing" is one of the few descriptions of penalty kicks that can be printed.

To get one, a defender has to be called for a hand ball in the penalty box or foul an attacking player in the area with a reasonable chance of scoring. And because scoring chances of any kind come along so rarely in soccer, attackers will do anything to persuade the ref to give them an unreasonable one ¡ª which, essentially, is what a penalty kick amounts to. All it takes is a touch and down they go in good time, staggering around like the bullet-riddled mobster played by Jimmy Cagney in the classic "top-of-the-world" death scene from "White Heat."

Soccer historian Colin Jose said penalty kicks were introduced by the Irish Football Association during the 1890-91 season, when the game was much more violent, to restore some balance between skilled, usually smallish forwards and the rugged big men who wound up on the backlines.

In the intervening years, penalty kicks became such an established part of the game that a protocol evolved on how to draw fouls worthy of the call. It's basically the same act as drawing a charge in basketball. But in soccer, because there's so little scoring and the punishment is so out of proportion with the crime, embellishing the foul was not only necessary, but elevated to a kind of performance art.

Many sports fans ¡ª Americans likely top the list ¡ª think of such theatrics as not just objectionable, but outright cheating. As long as it remains an essential part of the game, though, players will seek every advantage.

After the Azzurri's worst performance of the tournament, a 1-1 draw with an undermanned and overmatched U.S. team, Fabio Cannavaro, Italy's captain and as skilled a central defender as there is in the game, drew the team together for a pep talk. Included was a plea for a return to the traditional tactics that have served Italian teams well in the past, including "cynical" means.

Proof that Cannavaro got his point across came in the 95th minute of the Australia game. Backline mate Fabio Grosso faked Australian defender Lucas Neill to the ground, then tumbled over Neill ¡ª instead of going around him ¡ª to earn the penalty kick that Totti converted.

When Neill and his mates complained that soccer powers like Italy, France, Brazil, England and Argentina always seem to get the calls, they sounded like the New York Knicks used to when Michael Jordan did the same. And the complainants in both cases likely had grounds, since soccer referees, just like their basketball counterparts, generally operate on the same principle ¡ª which, for a lack of a better one, can be termed presumption of ability.

What's magnified the problem this month ¡ª and made it especially galling ¡ª are two things.

First, there have been a record number of red and yellow cards shown by referees, who were ordered by FIFA, the sports governing body, to punish both brutal defenders and faking forwards. Instead, there's been more fouling and more diving than ever, though the number of penalty kicks this year won't be anywhere near the record 17 of 18 in 1998, the first year the World Cup was expanded to 32 countries.

Second, this tournament is skidding toward an all-time low goal-scoring total. It stands at an average of 2.27 per match, and will break the record for futility ¡ª 2.21 from the 1990 World Cup ¡ª if no goals are notched in the final.

And you know what that would mean: a penalty-kick shootout to decide the champion. Sad as that would be, there may be no more fitting way for this World Cup to end.