The unstoppable Pats take on the Giants in a dream finale and Art Spander can�t wait

This is the way is has been compartmentalised, this championship American football game, Super Bowl LVII, tonight in the wide-open, wild-west suburbs west of Phoenix: The Team of Perfection against the Team of Destiny.

The 18-0 unbeaten New England Patriots, trying to make history - additional history that is, because they have already won more games in succession than any team in the 90 years of the National Football League. And the 13-6 New York Giants, trying to make an impression and a mess of the Patriots' quest.

Add the unavoidable fact the Patriots are 12-point favourites, and you have what might be called the Blackberry summation of the biggest annual sporting event in the United States.

But there is so much more. We have the Patriots, the American Conference winners, in their fourth Super Bowl in seven years, a rebuttal to the contention dynasties are no longer a possibility in the NFL. A victory and they would join the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who played a 14-game regular schedule, not the current 16 games, and finished 17-0, the only unbeaten team in modern history.

We have Tom Brady, the glamour boy of the Patriots, who could join his boyhood idol Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers and Terry Bradshaw of the 1980s Pittsburgh Steelers as the only players to quarterback four Super Bowl winners.

Brady fathered a son with his ex-girlfriend, the starlet Bridget Moynahan, and is now dating catwalk lovely Giselle Bundchen, making Tom as big in People magazine and the celebrity gossip shows as the sports pages.

We have Eli Manning, quarterback in a Super Bowl one year after his older brother Peyton quarterbacked the triumphant Indianapolis Colts in a Super Bowl.

We have a three-year-old stadium with silver sides and a sliding roof that looks like a spaceship that settled down in the desert, where the box-office price for Super Bowl seats is $700. Not that they are available except from touts.

We have Chris Snee, a Giants offensive lineman who just happens to be married to the daughter of his head coach, Tom Coughlin, a situation Coughlin contends is not at all awkward. "On the field," Coughlin explained, "he's treated like any player. At home, he's my son-in-law.'' And, as everyone in Scotland will be aware, we have Lawrence Tynes, born in Campbeltown. After two misses in regulation, he kicked the winning field goal in overtime on January 29 to give the Giants their 23-20 NFC title game victory over the Green Bay Packers.

Tynes' father was a US Navy Seal stationed at Port Glasgow who married a Scot, had three sons and when Lawrence was 10, moved the family to Milton, in the Florida panhandle. That's where Lawrence, 30, graduated from the round ball to the oblong one.

The population of Milton is around 15,000, but the athletic talent was huge. Tynes, Tennessee Titans defensive back Cortland Finnegan and PGA Tour players Boo Weekley, Heath Slocum and Bubba Watson all graduated from Milton High within a few years of each other.

To the small world category must be added Osi Umenyiora, who was born in London, moved to Nigeria, at 14 went to the US, played at the same university as Tynes, Troy State in Alabama, and as one of the Giants' defensive linemen is Tynes' team-mate.

If somehow the Giants are to stop the seemingly unstoppable Patriots, who set a record by averaging 36.8 points a game, it will be up to New York's defensive front three, Umenyiora, Michael Strahan and Justin Tuck to get to Brady. The Giants led the NFL in quarterback sacks, with 53, but had only one in the earlier game against him.

Chris Simms was the quarterback for the Giants when they beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI, in 1987. He now is an analyst on games televised by CBS.

"It's working right now for the Giants," said Simms, perhaps thinking with his heart. "They are about as hot a team physically and emotionally as I've seen. I can't remember a team like this going into the Super Bowl.'' All well and good but the logic dictates we stay with the Patriots. Brady injured his right ankle in the AFC championship win over San Diego, but in practice last week he has run well and handled all the media day sillieness, including a proposal from a Hispanic TV reporter in a wedding dress, with aplomb.

"This is the biggest game of our lives,'' he said. "My life, the entire team. We're going to be remembering this game for as long as we live, win or lose.'' So are the rest of us.

"With a football team as dynamic as they are,"

Coughlin, the Giants coach said of the Patriots, "you have to pretty much answer every time something happens. They make a move, you need to make a move as well.'' It is up to the Giants to stop them doing what has never been done before - finishing a year 19-0. The stakes couldn't be higher.