It's already being marketed as the biggest soccer show of all time _ and there is still more than five months before the covers are unwrapped in France on the finals of the 16th World Cup championship.

Michel Platini, who heads the local organising committee, knows a thing or two about the attributes which make a successful championship. He was a crucial figure in France's European Championship success in 1984 and his name was freely invoked in the campaign to establish his country as the centre of the sporting world for a month in the summer.

And he has no doubt about the judgement which posterity will pass on France 98.`

"Never have the signs looked so good for the World Cup finals," he says. "Everything will be put in place to make this the biggest and best tournament of them all."

With a record number of 32 counries participating, Platini is on safe ground when he talks of the size of the event. But will it be the best? That's a vastly sifferent proposition and depends on how vertain teams, notably brazil, are playing. When they arrive at the final phase of their preparations in early June.

It's no coincidence that many of the better World Cup finals coincided with those years when Brazil were on a flood tide of enterprise and the rest of the world sought to play at the same level. Now there is at least some evidence to suggest that the old aristocrats may be at the start of another epoch.

Historically, automatic qualification for the finals, and the consequent loss of competitive football for two years, has militated against defending champions. The exception, of course, were the Brazilians themselves, but that was close on forty 40 years ago when the competition had not yet acquired the kind of pressures which bear so heavily on today's superstars.

Most of those who fit that category in the modern era are Brazilian. One in particular, Ronaldo, has the ability to make this something of a personal extravaganza. Not all of his performances in the last year have matched that exalted billing: and yet, singly, he represents the brightest hope that skill and sophistication will triumph over the darker stratagems which some take to the finals.

For all the subtleties which players like Diego Maradona and Ossie Ardiles brought to the game in another era, Argentina have never quite distanced themselves from the scars of an unedifying World Cup programme in England in 1966.

Their performances in the South American qualifying showed that the preferred formula is still one of skill coarsened with some muscle. Their opponents will view them with apprehension. Chile, and a Colombian team which can boast of the exciting talent of Faustino Asprilla, will engender similar feelings.

Despite those resources, however, tradition suggests that the South American teams will leave without the trophy after the final in the new Stade de France in Paris on July 12th. Only once in almost 70 years has Europe failed to make home advantage count - in Sweden in 1958 when the precocious talent of the young Pele lifted Brazil to a 5-2 win over Sweden in the final.

For all Ronaldo's talent, there is nobody in the present Brazilian squad with the presence of the peerless Pele. It goes almost without saying that Europe, too, currently lacks that type of charismatic personality. But in spite of the doubts born of the preliminary rounds, the certainty is that the two established European powers, Germany and Italy, supported by Holland and the host country, France, will again compete abrasively.

There were occasions in the early stages of Group Nine competition when Germany looked far from the imperious power which qualified almost by right in other years. Northern Ireland's resilience notwithstanding, a 1-1 home draw with Bryan Hamilton's brittle team was scarcely the stuff of brilliance. But, typically, Germany were equal to the task of delivering on those days when it mattered most.

Italy's progress to the finals was more precarious still, with the merits of a superb 1-0 win over England at Wembley last February soon eroded in scoreless draws with Poland and Georgia. The punishment for that fallibility threatened to be severe until urgency induced bravery and they saw off Russia in the most challenging of the four play-off ties.

Sadly, the Republic of Ireland failed to survive the play-offs, losing a tie they might conceivably have won against Belgium. That result delighted the Belgians as much as it saddened people in this country, but unless they improve dramatically qualification for the finals may be the summit of Belgium's achievement.

Ireland's group conquerors, Romania, are, it seems, much better equipped for the long haul. Out of the disappointment of Euro 96 they have built a fine team, and while Gheorghe Hagi is now almost at the end of an outstanding career, they will still give England much to think about, when the teams meet in Group G in Toulouse.

Of England, it can be said with some confidence that they have now more strength in depth in their squad than at any time since they went to Mexico to defend the title in 1970. That is a product, primarily, of Terry Venables's time in charge, but with David Seaman, Tony Adams, Paul Ince and, hopefully, Alan Shearer, providing the spine of the team, they are one of the safer bets to make good progress.

Less bright, perhaps, are the chances of Scotland upsetting the odds. Their record in World Cup finals does not imbue confidence, and the fact that they have again drawn Brazil in their group will do nothing to convince them that they are capable of surviving the first phase of the final.

Yet, no less than England, they are worthy representatives of the game in these parts, in a drama which, for all the eccentricities of modern football, promises to be not less than compelling.