If Argentines Guillermo Canas or Juan Ignacio Chela are still around for the last day of the first week of the French Open, as their formidable clay-court skills suggest they might well be, their budding nationalism will be severely tested. Highly touted Argentina meets Nigeria on June 2 at Kashima Stadium in Ibaraki, Japan, in its 2002 World Cup opener.

	Argentina's Guillermo Canas, a huge soccer fan, says it will be hard to find a spot in front of the TV in the player's lounge.

What if their potential third- or fourth-round match is scheduled head-to-head with their country's long-anticipated soccer tilt?

"Oh," said Chela, laughing through the phone from Hamburg, Germany last week. "First of all, I try to see that they don't schedule my match at the same time. If they do, I have to play my match, of course. Then, I run back to the hotel fast as I can and watch the soccer match."

Of course.

"The good thing is, because of time change, they play most World Cup matches very early in the morning," Canas said from Hamburg. "Still, it will be hard to find a seat in front of the television in the locker room."

The French Open takes Paris by storm for two weeks each spring, but on May 31, when the favored French side meets Senegal in Seoul at 1:30 p.m. Paris time, will anyone be in the seats at Roland Garros?

"I wouldn't guarantee it," said Graeme Agars, the ATP's vice president of media relations. "I've been in Paris when France is playing in the World Cup and you can actually tell how the game is going. You hear the cheers and the silence, too.

"Driving from Wimbledon to London usually takes an hour, but when England is playing World Cup, it takes 10 minutes. You realize just how small the city is. In Europe and South America, the World Cup is bigger than anything else."

	“	It's tough to concentrate when the games are so important. I really hope we win the World Cup this year -- Argentina needs this. ”
		— Guillermo Canas

This year's World Cup runs the entire month of June -- from the first week of the French Open all the way to the first week of Wimbledon. The final in Yokohama, Japan, falls on the middle Sunday at the All-England Club. Attention spans on the ATP circuit will be challenged, to say the least.

"It's tough to concentrate when the games are so important," Canas allowed. "I really hope we win the World Cup this year -- Argentina needs this."

Canas went on to name the three teams in Argentina's F Group -- Nigeria, England and Sweden, the so-called "Group of Death." Could Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi tell you that the United States' opponents in Group D are, in order, Portugal, Korea Republic and Poland? Would they compromise practice schedules and doubles matches -- as some Europeans and South Americans have been known to do -- when the United States meets Portugal on June 5?

"Where I come from, soccer is very, very important," Chela said of Argentina which is third in FIFA's world rankings, behind France and Brazil. "We're one of the best teams in the world -- now we must prove it."

Professional athletes are an elite corps, but there are levels of stardom within that sphere, too. When French playmaker Zinedine Zidane, the two-time FIFA world player of the year, turned up at Monte Carlo, the French tennis players were awed. Cedric Pioline, Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clement stood silently and stared.

"They were dumbstruck," Agars reported. "Finally, Pioline said to his mates, 'He's really only an athlete, just like us.' "

Yes -- and no.

"World Cup athletes live on a plateau above and beyond the rest," Agars said. "That's just the way it is."

And tennis players, it turns out, are fans, too.

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.