Cameroon: Eight years ago, Harry Browne travelled around the US meeting the ethnic supporters of Ireland's World Cup opponents. This year he can meet them without setting foot outside Dublin.
One of the many reasons to look forward to the festival of football that starts on May 31st is that, when this country goes soccer-mad, it will do so for the first time with large groups of people supporting countries other than Ireland. China, Nigeria, even England, will run on to Asian fields with the voices of thousands to support them on this island.
Which is all very well. But what about the Republic of Ireland's Group E opponents? Obviously Ireland will not be entirely united.
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In Arnotts window, a pale-skinned mannequin models the sleeveless top worn so eyecatchingly by Cameroon's footballers en route to their African Nations Cup triumph earlier this year. At more than €60, however, it's unlikely to catch the eye of the hundreds of Africans doing more modest shopping in nearby Moore Street.
Outside one shop I ask an African security man where I might find "Pascal". He points me towards a hairdresser, where I can only imagine that Deyo Pascal Lacene is a welcome loiterer among the mostly female employees and customers.
As an asylum-seeker who has been in Dublin for the last year, Lacene is not permitted to work for money. But he spends his time between his little flat in Phibsboro and the gym, and his obviously ample collection of friends in Moore Street; occasionally on Sunday he gets to Fairview Park where an Irish soccer team - he can't remember the name - might give him a game.
Lacene is, first and foremost, a footballer - he has even sprung for the top. Back home, he says, he played as a professional for his hometown club, Racing of Bafoussam, until "political trouble" drove him first into hiding, then to Ireland. He tells me he has played international football at youth level for Cameroon.
Now aged 24, this summer he will watch his contemporaries, young men he grew up playing with, performing on the world's biggest stage, and he will think about what might have been.
And, he insists, what might yet be. "Two years from now I will have started a new life," he says. He's not sure where this will be, but he is convinced he will be playing soccer professionally again.
Possibly not in Ireland, where the style of the game doesn't suit him - it's too "kickanrun", too English. "In England they don't enjoy football. Football is to enjoy."
The list of talented Cameroon internationals who have failed to thrive in the English Premiership suggests his assessment is pertinent - though he says that clubs in English-speaking regions of Cameroon play more "English-style".
Lacene respects Irish footballers' "desire to win", and can rattle off the names of Ireland's 1990 team, but is certain Cameroon will triumph on June 1st. He rhapsodises about Ian Harte's brilliant left foot, then rhapsodises some more about what Cameroon's right-flank attackers will do to Harte when he tries to defend. He speculates about how Cameroon will try to wind-up Roy Keane.
As we talk, mainly in the English he has learned here, his eyes keep drifting to a nearby television - "Oh shiiiiiit," he murmurs appreciatively, and I turn around in time to see the slow-motion replay as a free kick bends into the top right corner.
Don't let the profanity put you off. It's part of football-talk, and in two languages Lacene is one of the most articulate and profound football-talkers with whom I've ever whiled away an evening. All chauvinism aside, when he explains why Cameroon could win the World Cup, I'm tempted to run into the bookies.
On a recent TV documentary about African football, someone said that of Cameroon's 15 million people, 13 million are footballers. More than soccer, however, unites Dublin's small, mostly francophone Cameroonian community - fewer than 300 people have applied for asylum here since the start of 1999, and another 57 Cameroonians are registered on student or work visas since September; many of them meet every Sunday to discuss issues arising from their lives in Ireland.
Coming from a country that boasts more than 200 different native ethnic groups, their solidarity and mutual support is impressive. The rivalry here with the far larger community from neighbouring Nigeria seems relatively friendly, too; at the Vincentian refugee centre in Phibsboro, I'm told the African Nations Cup was an occasion for banter rather than antagonism. (Lacene says Cameroonians can be magnanimous because Cameroon always beats Nigeria.)
Lacene doesn't concern himself much with racists ("I know I'm black; why do you say it?") and the Cameroonian Sunday meetings are not for him ("I have my own way of life") but he is nothing if not proud of where he comes from.
"Cameroon is a very rich and beautiful country. At this moment the politics and security are not very good. "Je suis un patriot," he says. "The government can take everything, but the team belongs to the people."
The Republic of Ireland play Cameroon on June 1st
