Mbappe and Messi poised for blockbuster finale

The biggest game in football takes place on Sunday afternoon with two of the brightest stars in the game looking to cement their place in history.

Defending champions France take on Argentina at the Lusail Stadium to bring one of the strangest and, for the most part, entertaining World Cups in recent memory to a conclusion.

Argentina and France are teams that, for all the twists, turns and shocks in Qatar, started the tournament among the favourites and are the last two standing having survived some pretty big banana skins in the semi-finals.

Two players stood out in those games as France overcame the dogged threat of Morocco and Argentina finally answered the 'when will Croatia get tired?' question.

That it was PSG team-mates Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe who took the headlines and the plaudits in those semi-finals will not have come as a surprise.

Messi has already confirmed that the final will be his last ever World Cup game and there’s a groundswell of support from Argentine fans and neutrals alike for him to bow out with a winner’s medal, having basically won everything else as a player.

As a 35-year-old, the Argentine talisman has had to reinvent himself as a player and having lost some of his natural pace to the aging process, Messi has developed into more of a creator than a finisher and those around him are reaping the rewards.

Messi has always carried the weight of expectation as a player for Argentina and has, at times, appeared to buckle under it.

Marked out as the natural heir to Diego Maradona from a young age, the diminutive attacker struggled to match his club success on the international stage. That he was surrounded by a better calibre of player at Barcelona than at Argentina only seemed to increase the