It may be too late for entry now, but just to ensure some domestic rivalry I am throwing my weight behind Croatia for the final tomorrow, despite France being clear favourites with the bookmakers! As much as anything else to demonstrate that Opta stats can calculate how much you run, but not how much determination you have.
Seeing Croatia come through their semi-final, (after two games with extra time) seemingly less tired than England, is a reminder in these days of pampered millionaire players, that for some, pulling on a national shirt makes them ready to run through brick walls and keeps alive the romance of 'the beautiful game' which has been so tarnished in recent years by off-field corruption and on-field petulance.
That a nation of 4.3m people could win the World Cup, where football superpowers, some with 50 times the population, have fallen by the wayside, would quite rightly shake the football world to its foundations and leave the rest of us wondering just what they put in the water in Croatia, for the country to have had not just one but two, 'golden generations' in the less than 30 years after their birth in 1991?