Turning up at the Slovenia training camp on the outskirts of Utrecht is a bit like wandering into a non-League club preparing for an FA Cup-tie against a Premiership side.

You know there's a match on because it says so on the fixture list but somehow the atmosphere is so untainted by pressure that it invigorates instead.

Slovenia is the smallest country ever to appear at the European Championship - a nation of two million people sharing Alpine borders with Austria and Italy whose tourist literature lists beekeeping as one of the national pastimes.

It was the first of the Yugoslav republics to gain independence in 1991.Tonight, Slovenia take on their former rulers in Charleroi, but there is none of the animosity which marked the encounters between Croatia and Yugoslavia in the Euro 2000 qualifiers.

Instead, the Slovenes are embarking on a great adventure which they know will end before the final but which has already filled the hearts of a nation with pride.

'We don't want to be too deferential to the big teams, though.They should know that the worst poison comes in the smallest bottles,' said Rudi Zavrl, Slovenia FA president.

The smiles extend as far as Slovenia's one player of genuine class, play-maker Zlatko Zahovic, who added: 'People don't even know where Slovenia is. At least now they might.'