The Desert Foxes (not making this up either) beat Egypt 1-0 with a first half goal from Anthar Yahia of Germany’s VfL Bochum. Last appeared in the finals in Mexico 86, where they drew with Northern Ireland but lost to Spain and Brazil.

Good luck to Ireland, who kick off in Paris in about 15 minutes. If you check out the ‘Latest Tweets’ section, we’ll have updates via Twitter…so you won’t have to log in. If you do, search for 11lions.

As a result of their dramatic 2-0 win on Saturday (the crucial second goal was scored in injury time), Egypt will meet Algeria for a third time on Wednesday in Sudan: whoever wins goes to South Africa. To describe this game as ‘a local rivalry’ is an understatement: the Algerian team bus was attacked at the weekend and both sides ending up blaming each other – the Algerians blamed Egyptians who had been wound up by satellite TV broadcasts (insert Fox News joke here), the Egyptians claimed that it was arranged by local Algerians to make them look bad.

So well done whichever genius at FIFA decided to arrange a playoff between two rivals who can’t stand each other in a country at war with itself governed by a regime that might be described as ‘dodgy at best’.

Naturally, we’ll have the result when it comes in; kick of is 5:30pm GMT.