Considering they have a common 450km-long border and have together been the beating heart of the European project for nearly 60 years, France and Germany are remarkably dissimilar.
Not so their football teams, which clash in Rio on Friday in what promises to be a fascinating World Cup quarter-final.
Take the goalkeepers: Hugo Lloris and Manuel Neuer don’t exactly look alike; but they are very proactive exponents of their craft, among the quickest to sprint off their lines to snuff out trouble. Germany’s Round of 16 clash against Algeria showed this trait to good effect, with Neuer racing repeatedly out of the penalty area to clear balls off the toes of pacey Algerian forwards exploiting the lack of speed in the German rearguard.