Here we are — the final, the decider, the big dance in the dystopian desert dreamscape that is the Qatar World Cup.

On Monday morning, the past 12 years of existential footballing crisis will reach its crescendo when Argentina and France walk out onto Lusail Stadium in front of a sold-out crowd of just a sniff under 90,000.

It is, in so many ways, a fairytale final.

Here is Lionel Messi, the captain and talisman of this storied football nation, the tournament's joint leading goal-scorer, now just a single warm evening away from holding the one trophy he has never managed to win.

He will attempt to do so in front of one of this tournament's most astonishing walls of noise, filled not only with the 35,000 fans who travelled from Argentina with spray-painted banners and drums and flags in tow, but the many others in Qatar who have become Argentinian by osmosis, absorbing the pride and hope and passion of a nation by emotional proximity to its magnetic megastar.

This will be, as Messi himself implied after their gentle jog past Croatia in the semi-final, his last World Cup. The last time he will walk out onto this stage, the last time he will wriggle and spin and glide despite carrying the weight of a nation on his shoulders, the last time he will look up and raise his arms and take it all in.

There is a kind of melancholy to the final from a Messian perspective. Argentina are favourites to win their first World Cup since 1986, reaching this point after playing some of the most impressive and effective football of the tournament.

Since their hiccup loss to Saudi Arabia in the opening group game, they have gathered momentum like a boulder down a mountain, barrelling past Mexico and Poland before the Socceroos offered a thicket of resistance in the round of 16.

But this team has a sense of destiny to it, as if the universe is watching them closely and urging them on. And that feeling has propelled them past the Netherlands and Croatia, and now sees them careening towards their final obstacle.

It is not just Messi who has been responsible for that: Julian Alvarez has been a revelation up front, Rodrigo De Paul a rudder in midfield, Emiliano Martinez a reckoning in goal. Head coach Lionel Scaloni has pulled Argentina out of its own shadow over the past few years, turning what felt like a hulking ship of a team into something slimmer, slicker, streamlined, built for things like this.

But for them to win it, for the narrative of Messi to reach its much-desired close, it will require the sacrifice of this 35-year-old superlative draped in white-and-blue, as if required by some ancient curse to maintain the natural balance of things. To get, you must give.

And give he has. So much of himself for so long. From the floppy-haired teenager weaving wonders in Spain to the bearded dad whose slowed-down body has become a different kind of footballing force, Messi has been this game's North Star, the thing we have watched with wonder for almost two decades. This final, while it feels like the arrival of something, will also be a kind of departure as his starlight slowly dips from our view.

On Monday, the old dreams of Argentina come up against the new reality of France — the reigning champions, into their fourth final in what will be the past seven World Cups, the team who walked through fire in the build-up and has emerged a diamond on the other side.

They're spearheaded by the quicksilver Kylian Mbappe, the tournament's other joint leading goal-scorer, who feels like Messi's heir apparent in terms of his sport-shaping aura.

But like Messi, Mbappe is just one part of this chorus. While many injuries and internal bickerings threatened to derail France before their World Cup campaign really began, Didier Dechamps has managed to pluck together a string of individuals and somehow make them harmonise.

Mbappe has been the soloist, the improviser, the jazz trumpet glinting in the light. He tore through the Socceroos in the opening group game and scored twice to muscle past Denmark in the second. He was rested for their shock loss to Tunisia in the third but re-emerged with fire against Poland, scoring twice more, before being flattened somewhat by England and Morocco.

But a couple quiet games from your soloist doesn't throw off the band, especially when it is one conducted by the stand-out Antoine Griezmann, that ferrety little midfielder who shifts the entire sound of a game with a flick — there clearing a corner in his own box, there again connecting a triangle through the middle, there again sending a rainbow of a cross into the area for a game-deciding goal.

We have also watched renaissance of Ousmane Dembele – still young enough that one wonders how he could need a renaissance, but after his temperamental dip at Barcelona has emerged in Qatar like a guided missile – and Olivier Giroud, that Greek statue of a man who moves about as quickly as marble but who has been just as reliable, withstanding the sands of time and temperament to step into the boots of the injured Ballon D'Or winner Karim Benzema.

It has been the arrival of lesser-known players, too, like Theo Hernandez, Aurelien Tchouameni, Jules Kounde, and Dayot Upamecano, all under the age of 25 and whose performances here have surely shuffled them from the edge to the centre of this French national team moving forward.