Lord Stan The Man

We’re done. Just like that, fans that come out in droves during the World Cup will retreat to hibernation until the summer of 2014. Back to following the real football after a 2-1 futbol loss for the USA in the first knockout round of the 2010 World Cup. To the Black Stars of Ghana again.

Everyone always wants to know when America will embrace soccer like the rest of the world. I have no idea if this will ever happen, and neither does anyone else. Even if the USA were to somehow win a World Cup, I don’t think we would definitely see a mass exodus of future Pelés and Maradonas flocking for the pitch instead of a court, gridiron or diamond.

I consider myself a soccer fan on the rise. I’ve followed every World Cup since pretty much 2002, and I vaguely remember watching France defeat Brazil in the 1998 final. I’m making a legitimate effort to learn the world’s footballers, starting with national teams and then studying club teams. I’ve made a vow to adopt an English Premier League team to follow come August (I’ve chosen Everton because of U.S. goalkeeper Tim Howard). So I try to defend the sport from its American haters.

But as the USA’s match with Ghana wound down and a loss seemed inevitable, I became frustrated. I wasn’t necessarily exasperated with any player in particular. Rather, I began to become frustrated with the sport that they call “football,” which at the time seemed inferior on so many levels to our definition of the same name (it still does seem that way).

It’s easy to recognize why most Americans don’t like soccer. The players flop more than John Kerry. Take today’s match, for instance. I’ve never seen anything more absurd in a contact sport than the Ghanaian players flopping all over the field. They aren’t even touched and they writhe on the ground in pain, feigning injuries so that the stretcher and the magic spray (the strange medical treatment given to players no matter what injury they sustain) must be summoned to waste even more time. Some of those players even make notorious flopaholic Cristiano Ronaldo seem like he could play in the NHL.

Need more reasons why nobody in the U.S. cares about soccer? The game has such an inexact nature. The ball goes out of bounds, play continues. The clock runs without stop, allowing the leading team to stall as if it is being sent to Room 101 after 90 minutes is over. There’s no instant replay. Our home league has almost no well-known players. Any sport in which the French can actually win a world championship must be stupid. The list goes on.

So we’ll be left with an empty feeling for a few days, all of us believing that a run to the semifinals was so close, yet so far. And we’ll all lament soccer’s backseat place in America, and analysts will declare that there’s still no place for soccer in the United States. Maybe this is true, maybe not. After this roller-coaster World Cup, I still don’t know where I stand.

I watched the game with friends, and after the final whistle, we sat on the couch dumbfounded at the way U.S. Soccer’s run had come to an end. Then we went to play soccer, as if we could somehow change the result with our own play. Or maybe we had already begun to crave the next World Cup run for the USA.

When we got there, there was a little kid and his dad on the field, kicking the ball around the goal. The kid must have been no older than 4. But there he was kicking around a soccer ball, donning a shirt with the traditional striker No. 10 on the back. The number of Landon Donovan, Wayne Rooney, Lionel Messi and Kaká at this World Cup.

Maybe there’s hope for the future of U.S. Soccer after all.


You can e-mail Stanley at lordstantheman@gmail.com with any comments or questions. Stanley writes a Detroit Lions blog for NFL.com's Blog Blitz powered by SportsFanLive.com.