Germany: Every time a big tournament comes around, pundits can be counted on for at least one trusty truism: "No one will be surprised if, by the end of the month, Germany are there or thereabouts."
This summer the truism is just not true. Some people will be very surprised indeed if this particular German team thrives in Japan and Korea, and among them are a great many of Ireland's German residents. Whether they're "self-loathing Germans" gone native or just smart about football, they're hardly flying the flag.
Scan a classroom full of fourth-year students at St Killian's "Deutsche Schule" in Clonskeagh, Dublin, and it's hard enough to pick out the nearly-half of them who are German, even with all stereotype-sensors working. You certainly won't spot the Germans by their confidence in success for Rudi Voeller's men on June 5th: Irish and German accents blend in tipping Mick McCarthy's boys - "because Roy Keane is better than Michael Ballack," says one.
Finally one student pipes up: "I just have the feeling Germany will win." (Yes, he is more tidily dressed and groomed than the class average, and he speaks the clipped, perfect English that marks him as not from these shores.) "But I don't really know much about football."
These students, happily, will be off school for the World Cup, though one Irish lad reckons he'll seek out his German classmates anyway "and rub it in their faces if we win".
The school's Junior and Leaving Cert exam students aren't smiling though; they'll be ensconced in the giant gym for their English papers on June 5th, catching only the game's first half during lunch break - and that only if they're brave enough to forego the books for 45 minutes. Nearby, children and parents from the primary school will watch the game on a giant screen in the assembly area, potentially a further curse for the exam candidates if a goal goes in. "The trouble in this place is that they won't know who's cheering," says the school's business manager, Simone Foth.
The 1996 census said 6,343 residents of the State were German-born, of whom more than a third lived in Munster. Not all those German-born people were German citizens, but the German embassy reckons that with Irish prosperity and further European integration since 1996 a "fair guess" at the number of Germans here now is about 8,000.
A growing proportion of these are likely to be professionals and tradespeople in the capital - Dublin's Germans are not the hippies and pensioners (and hippie-pensioners) of county Clare and west Cork.
Petra Schurenhofer is one of the many Germans who has been employed as a translator in Ireland's massive IT "localisation" sector. She can conceive of a situation whereby she might cheer for Germany "just to be contrary in a pub full of Irish people", but after more than a decade living here such patriotism as she owns up to is distinctly green.
She recalls that she switched her football allegiance at age 14 from glamorous Bayern Munich to her local club Duisberg, and she has made a similar switch to Ireland: "When you make a mistake you have to rectify it," she smiles.
Her compatriot Ralf Sotscheck has gone so far as to marry a Co Laois woman and get an Irish passport. He'll be cheering for Ireland too - and even hopes his native land is knocked out in the early stages, after reading German football's leading lights describe ours as "a warm-up group".
But surely top German players have a right to be confident? "Like who?" Well, Ballack . . . "Yes? Who else?" Um . . . "Deisler is injured. Jancker plays for Germany up front, but he sits on the bench for Bayern Munich."
Sotscheck, a writer and journalist with a German left-wing weekly, Taz, sums up in native style: "I would support Germany if they were crap and admitted it. But they're so bleedin' arrogant . . ."
The Republic of Ireland play Germany on June 5th
