Togo

Lomé had never seen anything like the night of 8 October 2005: a 2-0 win over the Democratic Republic of Congo sent Togo to the World Cup for the first time. Nine months later the Sparrowhawks were in Germany, drawn into a group with South Korea, Switzerland and France, and left it without a point after three matches.

The federation itself is younger than the country's independence by not much — it was founded in 1960, the year France ceded control, and had CAF and FIFA membership within four years. But Togolese football existed before the paperwork: a French Togoland side had already drawn 1-1 with the Gold Coast and Trans-Volta Togoland in Lomé, on 13 October 1956, four years before there was a Togo to represent.

The team's one deep run at the Africa Cup of Nations came in 2013, when they reached the quarter-finals and were undone by Burkina Faso in extra time. It remains the high point of a record that otherwise reads thin next to the West African sides Togo shares a border with — Ghana to the west, Benin to the east. Benin is the fixture that matters most locally, a derby the two countries have played since 1982 and one Togo has generally had the better of.

No one connected with the team is better known than Emmanuel Adebayor, who scored 32 goals for Togo and was named African Footballer of the Year in 2008, a season in which his club form at Arsenal made him, briefly, the most talked-about striker on the continent. He was not part of that first World Cup goal — Mohamed Kader scored it, against Switzerland — but for a decade and a half he was the name that made opponents mark Togo more carefully than a side of its size would otherwise warrant.