NB: Poll has been amended to take account of quarterfinal results. In all cases, votes previously cast count and will be taken into account
Decades ago, a girlfriend in Northern Ireland told me her father, a headmaster, was thrilled each year when a Christmas card from Captain Terence O'Neill, the Stormont prime minister, would flop - great US English verb for what a diving footballer does - on the doormat. No matter that every other head teacher in Ulster received one, too.
So I was not carried away when the above missive arrived at Twitter from @ussoccer_reply, the official "reply feed" for the United States Men's National Team (USMNT). Salut! Sunderland had indeed supported the USA at Brazil 2014, as a result of a readers' poll, but it was clear similar messages were going to heaven knows how many others.
And now the time has come to update the readers' poll, in which those who see Salut! proper but not necessarily Salut! Sunderland were and are equally welcome to participate. Treat is as a new survey, meaning you can vote again even if you ticked your preferred box in the original poll.
We are left with France vs Germany, Brazil vs Colombia tomorrow night, the Netherlands vs Costa Rica, Argentina vs Belgium on Saturday. That is the line-up for the quarterfinals of what has been a terrific World Cup.
And you can still vote to decide which team/country Salut! Sunderland supports.
For now, it's Belgium, who deserve it if only for Vincent Kompanys's great show of magnanimity towards Tim Howard...
Just eight teams survive. Our clear readers' favourite, USA (however those votes came!), are gone. They had started out as our honorary second team. England's early departure made them our first team. Uruguay were in second place throughout, presumably a reflection of support for Sunderland's head coach Gus Poyet. Belgium were third and, with the loss of all others mentioned in this paragraph, are now the readers' choice as favourites.
I have now pared down the poll settings to the remaining sides. Brazil are in the mix at last, having originally been excluded for no better reason than that I could have only 30 contenders according to the template offered by the poll organisers (England were also omitted, naturally, since we were looking for a "second team").
Every vote cast will be counted as additional to where the ratings stood when I created the new poll. That puts Belgium top, followed - in order - by the Netherlands, Argentina and Germany. Colombia, Costa Rica and France. But I gave Brazil the average score of the other seven so they stand third.
Complicated? Not really but this is just for fun so it hardly matters. It's been an outstanding World Cup so vote now if you want a say on which country Salut! should be supporting ...
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