Let the final great act commence

World Cup Final: You can just about imagine how thoroughly unimaginable the hype is. After a month of hyperbole and grand opera, the stage is left to a few disparate characters whose achievements are significant but whose legacy will be determined by an hour and a half of football in Hitler's old playground.

On the sidelines, Marcello Lippi, looking like a well-tanned and well-tended Paul Newman, is a man who finds that late in life his considerable attainments are questioned and undermined by the unfolding Moggi scandal back home in Italy.

To win against a backdrop of such dank unsavouriness would render the outcome of the investigations a mere footnote on Lippi's heavy CV.

He could walk way from Germany as one of the greatest managers in the world and accept the pay packet for it. To win the World Cup for Italy, especially with so prosaic a team, would be sublime. This time there is no Paolo Rossi, no Roberto Baggio, no Toto Schillaci even. No. Just a handful of misfiring stooges filling out the attacking places as their comrades keep the total of goals conceded down to a single own goal while sharing the burden of scoring.

And down the line, looking like the former drag queen and current chat-show host Paul O'Grady, there stands a man in bespoke threads and unwisely fashionable glasses who has been mocked and derided since he took this job. Poor Raymond Domenech. He has it all to lose and just enough to gain to make it worth his while.

If France triumph in Berlin, the night, the summer, the year, the era will belong to Zinedine Zidane.

In the merriment, they will say of Domenech that at least he kept out of the way - at least when the boys were running the team Domenech knew when to keep his counsel. And if France lose, Domenech's incompetence will have cost Zizou his glory and his coronation. Could he not have chosen better confederates to complement Zidane's brilliance? All Domenech had to do was come up with a supporting cast.

Now, cross the white, painted border out on to the field.

France's racially diverse team have failed to intoxicate in this World Cup; rather, as they have reached altitude, they have adjusted their effort so that they simply will the energy to do what needs to be done. But the joy of watching them is the knowledge that every win, every goal, every communal celebration inserts Monsieur Jean-Marie Le Pen's opinions a little farther up his fundament.

French success, no matter what the manner of it, carries that joy and that romance. This team, cobbled together from children of Guadeloupe, Algeria, Senegal and half a dozen other spots, are a side for our times. Not just the most dominant international side of the last decade, but the most unlikely collective, a team of temperaments and egos and divos with the capability to meld their troubles towards a common passion whenever needed.

Not just for the magnificent Zidane will tomorrow night be an adieu. The elegant Lilian Thuram, the gangly Patrick Vieira, the quirky Fabien Barthez - these, too, have reached the door marked exit.

And the Italians? There is a tendency to see Italian World Cup wins as triumphs of pragmatism and patience, proof of the vintage of any World Cup year that cried out for attacking geniuses.

Some of what we have seen here has been old-style Italian, but it has been magnificent. Deprived of Nesta, their outstanding centre back, the Italians have settled into a run of games in which the back four have consistently emerged as the stars of the side. Gianluca Zambrotta and Fabio Grosso in the full-back positions and Fabio Cannavaro plus AN Other at the heart of the defence. Their defiance has been magical and convincing.

At midfield, Andrea Pirlo's play-making has been at times majestic, and certainly even Zidane would have tipped his cap at the little angled ball Pirlo played to Grosso deep, deep into extra time against the Germans. Grosso scored, but a lesser player than Pirlo would never have seen the pass given the frustration and fatigue then hanging over every player.

And in the Italian forward lines? There must be somebody there bursting to make his name. A goal or two in Berlin will guarantee immortality. Anyone?

The Italians haven't been a beautiful story here but they are a romantic one. Not so many years ago Serie A football was seen as the height of modern footballing civilisation. There was a time when more people watched Channel 4's limited coverage than watched top-flight English football on terrestrial TV.

Now Italy are playing for their footballing culture. Their league has lost prestige and attendances have dwindled. The big names want to be in Spain or even in Britain. Soon, it seems, the mighty Juventus will be in Serie C.

Tomorrow night Lippi, who many years ago, when he took the Juventus job, had to go to his father's grave to explain why he was going to work for such a symbol of power, sends a team out onto the field hoping they can keep Italy alive as a football power, as a living, breathing, football culture.

There are those professional curmudgeons who will pick holes in the Mona Lisa and tell you it is an ordinary painting of a plain-looking girl, and those who will claim this hasn't been a great World Cup.

It has. It has been magnificent, brimming with stories and incident, a month-long drama playing out against the backdrop of the sternest nation in Europe letting its hair down and dancing.

A great World Cup needs a great final. Tomorrow night we have the romance, we have the stakes, we have the mingled narratives coming together as one.

If France and Italy can raise their game to match our hopes, we will have a festival which finishes with fireworks and love.