Petit's sadness

Emmanuel Petit (right) is convinced the spirit of his dead brother will be willing him to become a World Cup winner on Sunday.

Arsenal's midfield star lost elder brother Olivier to a brain haemorrhage during a game 10 years ago.

Since then Petit has dedicated his career to Olivier's memory, putting himself through a memorial ritual before every game.

He will do it again before taking on Brazil in the Stade de France, standing alone in the penalty box before the start, picking up a piece of grass and letting it float away in the wind.

"It means everything to me to think about Olivier," said Petit, one of four members of Aime Jacquet's squad - Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps and Christian Karembeu are the others - to have lost a brother to an early death.

"I know on Sunday that when I stand there I will be thinking of him more than ever before, wishing he could've been here to see me.

"But I know he will be looking down at me from above. I will feel him there watching me."

There could be no more powerful emotional pull for anybody than the candle Petit keeps burning in his heart and mind. That feeling has stayed with him for a decade, even when he found himself out of favour with Jacquet. As recently as March, Petit feared he would not be in the French squad and in May he was relieved to have been included.

Seven weeks later Petit has become a fixture in the French team. "Football is like life," he said yesterday at the French training base at Clairefontaine, outside the capital. "You never know what will happen.

"I've had an extraordinary season. We won the double at Arsenal and now I'm going to play in the World Cup final. It could only be better if I won the World Cup and the European Cup in the same season! I have waited for this moment for all of my life and now it's arrived."

Despite celebrations in the streets of Paris into the early hours of yesterday morning, Petit maintained that none of the French team would be satisfied with second best.

"Perhaps four years ago we would've been happy to get this far, but the mentality of the French players has changed now," said the 27-yearold. "Now we have to win to consider ourselves successes. We have had quality players for many years but now most of us play outside France, for big teams in the best leagues in the world.

"When you play for those sort of clubs you have to win, and learn how you can come from behind as we did in the semi-final. That's the big change."

Even so, conquering the defending champions would be the biggest mountain of all, although Petit believes his side will do that.

"Brazil are a great team, extremely offensive with lots of quality players, but against Denmark and Holland they could've lost and they did lose to Norway in the group," he said. "They can be beaten and we know that. All the pressure is on them because they will be the favourites.

"We are happy to be the underdogs because they have won the World Cup four times and this is our first final. But we feel the game is 5050, that either team can win it. We are confident we will."