Gooooooaaaaal!

How does the world's most popular and important game, the most popular youth sport in America, and one of the last pure sports suffer from such indifference in this country?

As I write this I am watching Germany and Argentina in the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup. Argentina just scored on a brilliant set piece header to silence the hometown German fans in the 49th minute.

Last week we were moored at Rosario Resort on Orcas Island (more on that later) and in the hip little dockside bar that served me up some wireless Internet, I watched Argentina beat Mexico in overtime to advance. There were 15 of us crammed in this little bar in the middle of an 80 degree day watching soccer on a cheap ass television with a sketchy satellite signal. It was a great afternoon.

But that's not the point here. Why do Americans dislike this game so much?

Don't give me the low scoring argument.

Last night's Mariners-Diamondbacks game ended 3-2.

Don't give me the lack of "action" argument.

In soccer the action never stops. The play is always moving, for 90 minutes. In American football the play stops every 4 seconds.

Oh, and in the paper last week I read a commentator arguing that the game was too complicated.

Please. The rule books for American sports are mindboggling and so nuanced that they have to change every year. They tweak the rules in the NBA and NFL every month, and we don't even trust the officials enough to call the game, so we have to use computers and cameras to call the games. Try explaining American football to a newcomer. False starts, offsides, men in motion...

Here's what it is...

Americans are idiots. We look at a sport that the rest of the world has endless passion for and we dismiss it out of hand. Because we can't claim it as our own, we turn away and create our own games. We aren't as good at it as Ghana or the Ukraine, so we quit like a sore loser on the playground. "Oh yeah, well I didn't want to play with you anyway!" So what if the USA lost in the World Cup, it's a dumb game anyway.

Americans are ruled by rules. There is nothing pure in this country anymore. We have even ruined baseball, the closest thing we had to a pure sport.

Americans are stupidly fixated on superstars and individual accomplishments. This gives us, instead of wonderful teamwork and strategy, Barry Bonds...

You would think that since so many of us played this game as kids we would have a greater affinity for and understanding of the game...soccer doesn't privilege size over speed or speed over size or one skill over another. There is a place on the soccer field for any reasonably athletic kid.

(oh, and there's a reason that so many kids play soccer: it has a short learning curve, it doesn't take expensive equipment, and you can play with as many kids as you happen to have around at the time. Try playing baseball with 6 kids.)

Look folks, watch soccer. It's a beautiful game.