James Lawton: Vieira's shining symbol rises above Blatter fiasco

On one side of town there is the bespoke-suited, diamond-ring shining, fat-cat victory of the Fifa president Sepp Blatter over the rebels who, almost touchingly, believed they had a chance of cleaning up the administration of the world game. On the other there is Patrick Vieira in his training sweats talking about the dream he is living before tomorrow's opening of the World Cup, when his world champions France take on the land of his birth, Senegal. Vieira says that he has never felt like this before any single match.

It is the two sides of a city – and the football planet. One is about the accumulation of power, the control of a sport of unique appeal. The other is about playing that sport and maybe lifting it to the heavens.

Vieira has been known to move the game in an opposite direction. His discipline, which has so often disabled the brilliant game of the continent he left as a small boy, has betrayed him many times. But then at his best Vieira is one of the great players, a ramrod and artist at the same time. His force can be irresistible and now, at this time and place, it soars above any claim that the midfield engine of Arsenal and France is not above the commercial forces that were on such rampant display across town.

The football world may be waiting to see if he will indeed desert Highbury for the masters of Europe, Real Madrid, but for at least a few weeks his life is complicated only by the need to win.

If Vieira knows his power in the market, he remains attached to the ultimate imperative of his trade. It is to play at the highest possible level and if one night you get to do it for your powerful adopted country against men who share the roots and the dreams of your own life, at the dawn of a World Cup, well, could anything else quite so engage the spirit?

"It will be the most emotional game of my life," confirms the 25-year-old who was born in Dakar and soon moved with his family to the great high-rise kraal of African-immigrant France.

"There is nothing to equal it. It is like every part of me, all my feeling, comes together at the same time, but when the match starts I will have to shut out all of that. I will have to play for my team. That is France, the champions of the world.

"I hope and believe we can win the World Cup again and if we do we would be one of the three or four top teams in the world – and I mean ever. There would be no doubt about. We are already part of the history of France because we were the first French team to win the World Cup. To do it again, having won Euro 2000 in between, would be fantastic, unbelievable.

"Of course we should win this first game. But we know every first game is very difficult for reigning champions. You feel like the world is looking at you, and that you just have to deliver something special. It means we have to be focused and aggressive, and that should not be so difficult because we also remember the game between Cameroon and Argentina in Italy in 1990."

Certainly the pre-game parallels between that hot night in Milan and tomorrow's game here touch the uncanny.

Argentina, like France now, had question marks against the potency of their greatest stars. Could the champions Argentina be carried by Maradona as they were in Mexico four years earlier, had the Hand of God been turned against him? Here, it is a matter of whether France can operate effectively in the absence of Zinedine Zidane, the hero of the Stade de France four years ago and Hampden Park earlier this month, when he inspired and created victories for France in the World Cup final and Real Madrid in the European Cup? It is feared Zidane, who suffered a thigh injury against South Korea in the final warm-up game at the weekend, may miss all three group games – and if and when he returns will he able to re-capture quickly enough the recent brilliant edge of his game?

Maradona could not sustain his influence against the fierce tackling and rapid break-outs of Cameroon, who scored the only goal, and, in the absence of the world's greatest player, Vieira carries massive responsibility against an African team who are at around the same stage of development Cameroon brought to Italy 12 years ago.

Moulded into a tactically aware team by their passionate French coach, who recently married a Senegalese woman and converted to Islam, earlier this year Senegal were considered unlucky not to beat Cameroon in the final of the African Nations' Cup. Cameroon had the striking threat of François Oman Biyick, Senegal boast of El Hadji Diouf, who is being touted as the new George Weah of African football.

Vieira nods and says that he knows the threat coming from his homeland. "Senegal's football has improved dramatically," he says. "We know that – and we also know that you cannot win any game just by talking. We are the world champions, but that will mean nothing to Senegal, who are young and strong and quick. We are just another team to beat.

"The improvement in Senegal football started when so many of their players started coming to the French league. They have no problems tactically any more because their coach Bruno Metsu has been very good for them. It is fantastic for Senegalese football for them to reach the World Cup. It takes them to another level."

Vieira's own level at the moment appears to be competitive bliss. "The match against Senegal is a celebration. It is extraordinary to play in a match like this against the country where I was born and in the finals of the World Cup. My memories of Senegal are vague, it is true, but, although my close relatives are in Paris, I still have family in Senegal, including an aunt and uncle who I will speak to on the phone about the match. I know they will be watching."

Currently the Korean police are watching the Senegal midfielder Khalilou Fadiga. The Auxerre player is under suspicion of stealing a gold necklace, said to be worth a mere $168 (£119), while on a shopping stroll this week. Unlike the episode that delayed the late England captain Bobby Moore in Bogota before the start of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, this affair is not likely to command international headlines. Fadiga protests his innocence and there has to be a feeling, in view of what happened on the other side of town, that his banishment from this World Cup city might be considered a shade excessive.

Such mishaps unfailingly occur at this point in the football cycle and what, after all, is one gold necklace against the charge that the whole game may have been stolen for another four years.

The good news is that tomorrow France, the masters of football, play a bunch of young lions from the now perennially stirring football continent of Africa, and at the heart of it is Patrick Vieira – a perfect symbol of the game that once again so mightily straddles the world.