These are bleak days for Austrian football. Fifa’s world rankings are not necessarily the most reliable guide, but it is never a good thing to be behind Benin and Oman. And Haiti. Or St Vincent and the Grenadines. For a nation that 75 years ago was probably the best in the world, to have sunk to 88th is some decline.

“Getting into the quarter-finals would not be a sensation, it would be a world sensation,” said Josef Hickersberger, Austria’s coach. Hickersberger knows a thing or two about humiliation. He was coach in 1990 when Austria lost a European Championship qualifier to the Faroe Islands. Little wonder that Michael Kriess, son of a former international, recently launched a petition encouraging Austria to withdraw from Euro 2008 – which the country is co-hosting with Switzerland – to avoid embarrassment.