Togo national football team at the 2006 Football World Cup

Les espiviers are making their first World Cup appearance this year, coached by Stephen Keshi. The team has qualified for the 2006 World Cup thanks to overcoming five teams in their group, most notably Senegal and Zambia, and are currently the lowest-seeded team in the World Cup finals.

Togo started their World Cup campaign in October 2003, with a defeat against Equatorial Guinea, before qualifying top of a six-team table in June 2004. They qualified another 16 months later after beating the Congo.

The Togolese team's current list of standout players include Yao Aziawonou, who plays for Young Boys in Switzerland, and Souleymane Mamam, owned by Manchester United, currently on loan at their feeder club Royal Antwerp.

They have the players available to do something. But having not gone beyond the first round in their own country's champions league, and facing France and South Korea, their chances of progression look bleak. To hope for a defeat against France, though, the same way as Senegal got four years ago? Anything's a possibility.