I have happy balls!Well, our ini­tial short-list of poten­tial under-achiev­ing teams to sup­port through the World Cup has proved some­what too accu­rate: site favourite Hol­land weren’t in such Ruud health; per­son­al pick Spain went down the drain like rain on the plain; and the poor old Mex­i­cans wave good­bye to their cup hopes for anoth­er four years.

Of the ini­tial short­list, only Por­tu­gal remain. And of the oth­er quar­ter-final­ists who meet any of our cri­te­ria (under-achiev­ers, excit­ing play­ers, errat­ic form), you can’t con­sid­er the Ukraine, who are real­ly too bor­ing by half, as are one-time win­ner Eng­land, who might have come away with our sym­pa­thy vote if it was­n’t for the fact they’re play­ing such dour foot­ball.

Italy, Brazil, Argenti­na and Ger­many are all mul­ti­ple win­ners, so that rules them out, leav­ing the oth­er one-time win­ner France as our out­side pick. They might be the go, actu­al­ly, as on clos­er analy­sis, they cer­tain­ly meet the cri­te­ria: only the one Cup cham­pi­onship in 1998, but then had the form-rever­sal of the tour­na­men­t’s his­to­ry when they could­n’t even score a goal in defend­ing their title at the 2002 tour­na­ment. And plen­ty of flash play­ers: Hen­ry, Zizou, Saha, Vieira…

So, who’s it to be? Por­tu­gal, France…?