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…?