World Cup countdown: Gerry Thornleysets the context for the opening game, between a team long neglected and their chief benefactors

Once again Argentina are seemingly being served up on the proverbial platter for the delectation of the World Cup hosts, and few citizens on the planet take their food and their rugby quite as seriously as the French. Next Friday's curtain raiser in front of an 80,000 capacity Stade de France is an intriguing opener to the 2007 Coupe du Monde, not least because no-one has done more for Argentinian rugby than the French, and Los Pumas' way of thanking them of late has usually been to beat them. There's gratitude for you.

Argentina's continuing ability - like that of Samoa - to rub shoulders with the long-established elite is one of the wonders of the professional age. Not alone do Argentina have no professional club structure in their own country, they have no tournament to play in outside the World Cup, and in a classic chicken-and-egg scenario they are unlikely to obtain one without the other. And it's the sheer vastness of the country, and how their estimated 70,000 players are spread out, that makes it almost impossible to start up an indigenous professional structure.

The 300-plus clubs are spread over 24 provincial unions, with a distance of about 5,000 kilometres between the clubs in the southernmost and northernmost parts of the country. Yet they thrive from generation to generation.

During the summer Juan Miguel Leguizamon, the engaging London Irish backrower, spoke of his early days playing (rugby) for Santiago Lawn Tennis Club alongside his father and two brothers.

Sometimes sons of players are literally registered with the same club as their father on the day of their birth. In the case of Leguizamon, he moved to Buenos Aires and joined the famed San Isidoro club, where the likes of the current Argentina head coach, Marcelo Loffreda; Rolando Martin, Ireland's bête noire in Lens; Diego Albanese and Gonzalo Tiesi all played. (Indeed, remarkably, San Isidoro provided the entire Argentina pack in 1974.)

Leguizamon was spotted by London Irish when playing for the Barbarians.

So entrenched is the Argentinian club game that, in all probability, the UAR's notions of streamlining the elite end of the game into a professional structure based on franchises would either be resisted or simply lack appeal at grassroots.

Hence, for all the generational hold on a relatively small core of the population, Argentinian rugby is utterly dependent on the willingness of the elite countries to provide not only games but also a professional home for their leading players.

On both counts France has been their best friend. A Great Britain side toured Argentina in 1910, but the first country to send a national team to Argentina to play Los Pumas was France in 1949.

Awarding full caps for the two test series, France won both games in Buenos Aires, by 5-0 and 12-3. All told they have played the Pumas 39 times - 27 of them in the Argentinian capital - which is almost four times the number of games the other home unions have granted to Argentina.

Los Pumas have won only eight of those meetings; three in successive drawn series at home in the 1980s, once famously in Nantes in 1992 and then four times in succession since the turn of the Millennium under the opposing regimes of Loffreda and Bernard Laporte.

They even succeeded where the big three in the Southern Hemisphere and England have failed, storming France's citadel in the Stade Velodrome in Marseille.

The four-match run ended with a two-point defeat in Paris last November, though the French were clinging on at the end after Felipe Contepomi's switch from centre to outhalf inspired a stirring, last-quarter comeback.

Significantly, of the 15 French-based players in the Argentinian World Cup squad, a dozen of them are with the top five clubs. However, like the talented centre Martin Gaitan, their experienced winger José María Nuñez Piossek has been ruled out of the tournament, although this has reopened the door for one of two players originally ruled out, Martin Aramburu.

Loffreda is short of firepower out wide and this perhaps rules out the option of Juan Hernandez being employed at his newly preferred position of outhalf because his experienced Stade Français teammate Ignacio Corleto may be required to play on the wing.

Gonzalo Longo's thigh strain has also ruled him out of Argentina's opening two games, though they have options aplenty in the back row.

Despite his virtuoso performance in masterminding Argentina's win over Ireland in Sante Fe, and his greater experience of playing outhalf with Leinster, it seems Contepomi is being strictly considered as a centre - or perhaps as an outhalf in a plan-B endgame.

Federico Todeschini, like Gonzalo Quesada before him, is Loffreda's more conservative, goalkicking outhalf.

Todeschini is not of test-match pace and - as their defeat in Cardiff to Wales highlighted - is defensively vulnerable, while for all his dead-eyed goalkicking, he appears unlikely to be afforded many opportunities by Laporte's ultra-disciplined French.

Significantly too, in a hard-line crackdown on discipline, every citing commissioner at the finals will have 25 camera angles to call on. Thus, the possible spate of injuries in what is sure to be a plethora of seismic, high-impact collisions, could well be compounded by a higher rate of suspensions.

The Pumas are paranoid about their treatment in the world order, but then they have probably every right to be. Venting his spleen about the Pumas' treatment by Chris White in their Cardiff defeat, Loffreda forewarned: "I am really aware of what will happen at the World Cup. We are going to be level with France and with Ireland but if there is a different interpretation of the rules it will change that. I don't want us to be treated so unfairly because we are from South America or because we are from Argentina. I want the same rules for everybody."

Nevertheless, on a line through Wales, France come into Friday's opener with far more momentum than Argentina, or arguably anybody else. In contrast to the apparent mood in Ireland, suddenly the air in France is thick with giddiness - heightened by another visit to their state-of-the-art, government-funded base in Marcoussis by president Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday.

The president is a close friend of Laporte, who, like Loffreda, will relinquish his position after his second World Cup to become secretary of state for sport.

All of a sudden the French coach is having to dampen expectations.

The optimism is, however, infectious and was exemplified by this week's comments of Sebastian Chabal, who has emerged as something of a cult hero of French rugby in the last month. Drawing inspiration from the heroes of 1998, who delivered the football World Cup in the Stade de France, Chabal likened the squad to 30 Zinedine Zidanes.

"We think a lot about winning the World Cup," he said. "Now we have done everything we needed to do to be champions and we just have to play the games. We are fit, we look good on the pitch, but we will have to play the games to know the truth.

"It was a huge event when France won the football in 1998. There were 10-million people in Paris and it was unbelievable. If we can do the same as the football team, then I think we will have the same support behind us. You try to put that thought to one side, but you always dream about being a world champion."

Les Bleus are entitled to dream.