Preview: Argentinian fire meets Croatia's cool resolve

The 22nd FIFA World Cup is approaching its end. By Sunday evening, we will have our champions, but there'll surely be a few more twists and turns yet in a tournament that's had more drama than an Eastenders omnibus.

The group stages were fun, garlanded with enough upsets and good games to keep us intrigued.

Often, major tournaments start strongly and then simmer down into tactical slogs once the stakes get higher in the knockout stages. But we had four fine quarter-finals, each one rammed with tension and talking points.

Perhaps the quality hasn't been sky high, but who needs quality when you have penalty shootouts and schemozzles?

Which leads us to the first of our semi-finals on Tuesday night: Argentina v Croatia.

Croatia are a remarkable team. Having made the World Cup final four years ago, they're back in the last four thanks to technical excellence, impressive nous and bucketloads of resilience.

The evergreen Luka Modric has further embellished his wonderful career with another fine tournament but there's been plenty of excellent performers around him.

Josko Gvardiol [above] is regarded as one of the best young centre-halves in the world. The 20-year-old RB Leipzig man has every top club in the world chasing him. He's exceptional - a calm, aggressive leader.

However the much-maligned Dejan Lovren has quietly shone beside him. Lovren moved from Liverpool to Zenit Saint Petersburg two years ago and while he certainly has mistakes in him, it has to be said that he's been flawless so far.

The likes of Ivan Perisic, Mateo Kovacic and Marcelo Brozovic provide a tough, experienced spine while Celtic right-back Josip Juranovic has really turned heads with his performances, not least in how he subdued Brazil's Vinicius Jnr.

Croatia