The shadow of Dennis Bergkamp will fall over the Stade de France this evening as Holland and Belgium leave their dressing-rooms for their opening game in the World Cup.
A couple of months ago the respective managers, Guus Hiddink and his Belgian counterpart Georges Leekens, were basing their preparations on the assumption that the fluent Arsenal striker would play.
Now, in the countdown to one of the more attractive games in the first phase of the competition, it seems as if he may not even get on the pitch.
Despite earlier announcements that his damaged hamstring was still too fragile to warrant inclusion, Hiddink is apparently having second thoughts and may put Bergkamp on the bench. "It's a very difficult decision for the manager," said one member of the Dutch backroom staff. "On the one hand it's very important to have Bergkamp with us but that has to be set against the risk of his missing the rest of the championship."
On the face of it, the Dutch are not short of alternatives. In Bergkamp's absence, Marc Overmars grew in stature when he played a vital part in Arsenal's triumphant late charge to the English FA Cup and Premiership double.
And further back, the assorted skills of Michael Reiziger, Ronald de Boer, Wim Jonk and Edgar Davids give the Dutch a realistic chance of survival in the first phase.
However, since their celebrated success in the 1988 European Championship in Germany they have seldom performed to their full potential, a point painfully illustrated in their abject collapse in the European finals in England two years ago. Too often, it seemed, players were more interested in their own performances rather than a collective team effort.
Hiddink's challenge has been to restore team morale and ensure that players like Davids and the equally eccentric Patrick Kluivert contribute in full to what is likely to be their toughest test in two years.
Belgium's progress will be watched with keen interest by Irish fans for it was they who denied Mick McCarthy the chance to make it three World Cup final appearances in-a-row for Ireland.
In retrospect, his failure to achieve it was less attributable to the qualities of the Belgians but more as a result of the failure of some established Irish players to deliver over the two legs of the tie.
On the evidence of those performances Belgium's great strength resides in a big forthright defence and the stabilising influence which the veteran Franky Van Der Elst, playing in his fourth World Cup finals, brings to the side.
In attack, the PSV striker Luc Nilis has now developed to the point where he has eclipsed the Brazillian-born Luis Oliveira as the main threat. Yet, a significant all round improvement is imperative if they are to start with a win here.
