No one really knew if Winning Eleven for the Nintendo DS had been a collective dream that rabid fans of the series had shared around the time of the portable's launch. Everyone seems completely convinced that it was in development – except Konami, who refused to give an answer either way.

Well, thanks to our friends at Nintendo in Japan, here is confirmation and some really small screenshots. So smal, in fact, that with the DS hardware removed they measure a mere 85 pixels across, which is pretty small and rather frustrating.

No specific details of the game were offered to us at time of press, other than the game is in development and will be fully online. Fully online. Fully...

You see, this news piece was actually the best piece of news all year. A fully kitted-out version of the greatest football game ever for your DS that will play online via the millions of access points delivering Internet football you can actually play!

We'll do our best to obtain larger screens in the coming weeks, though in the meantime you'll have to make do.