Federer or Murray – I bet the Germans have a word for desiring two mutually exclusive outcomes

I wrote a piece about my all-time greatest sporting hero, Roger Federer, at the start of last year in which I called on him to retire: “I don’t want to see Federer haunting tournaments for years to come, never quite making it to the final, being beaten by players he would have slaughtered in his glorious prime, and giving us nothing more than occasional reminders of former greatness. Federer mustn’t turn into a side-show.”

Some side-show! If Federer wins tomorrow, he’ll be back at No.1, and I and many other tennis-lovers will be scraping the omelette from our faces - but we'll be laughing as we do it.

The Man with the Liquid Whip (that’s his forehand, by the way, rather than anything more sinister) hasn’t won a slam for two and a half years, but between the US Open last September and the French Open last month, old twinkle-toes rediscovered his match-winning mojo, racking up no less than seven ATP tournament wins, including his sixth end-of-season Masters tournament in London last November – one hell of a coda to the greatest career in tennis history. The Swiss was on a lovely roll (geddit?). More significantly, he seemed to have got his nerves under control – he was winning the sort of squeaky-bum best-of-three-set finals he’d have lost twelve months earlier: no more first serve breaking down, no more booming forehands beyond the baseline on pressure points, no more weedy backhands tamely plopping into the net.

But I still thought another slam was beyond his reach, because I didn’t believe he could any longer beat either Nadal or Djokovic over five sets: he might best either of them on a good day if he got off to a flyer in a three-setter, but in long-form matches Nadal owned Fed’s head, and Djokovic’s robot-like accuracy would invariably wear down the Swiss’s delicate mechanisms. (Do get on with it. Ed.)

This view seemed to be confirmed when the Serbinator bashed him off the court in the semis at Roland Garros – I’ve rarely seen the Great Man play with less belief: it was pretty embarrassing. Then he lost the final at the Halle grass-court tournament just before Wimbledon – to 34-year old Tommy Haas. Oops! And at this year's Wimbledon he was within two points of losing to Julien Benneteau (sacré bleu!). Even with Nadal out of the tournament, I began to fear that the Djoker (look, I don’t make these up, okay?) might dish out another three-set pasting when they met in the semis.

Well, now we know. Not since the Australian Open final in 2010, when he crushed Andy Murray in three sets, have I seen that “Up yours, sunshine  – this is my court!” look in Federer’s eyes during a slam match against one of the Big Four.

And now he’s in the Wimbledon final for a record-breaking eighth time. Normally, I wouldn’t have any doubts about who to support, but his opponent is Andy Murray, the first Briton to make it to a Wimbledon final in 73,000 years, or something. I eschew nationalism when tennis-watching. I hate it when the BBC cuts away from a match involving top men’s seeds to head over to Court 83 to watch some plucky no-hoper Brit get whacked off the court by an armless Senegalese midget who’s ranked 938 in the world. But, among current players, Murray’s genius is second only to Federer’s, and for that reason alone I’ve always wanted the charmless Caledonian to win a slam. And where better to do it than here?

But I’d also dearly love to see Federer regain the number one spot to match Sampras’s Top Dog record – and, of course, create a six-slam cushion between him and Nadal.

Now I like Roger Federer, and yet I'm also keen on Andy Murray. But which is it better to support? There's only one way to find out...

See you after the break.