USA! USA! USA!

A brief diversion to soccer as the World Cup begins. A few things Americans need to know about the World Cup.

1. It's great that ESPN is broadcasting the games because it means that, for a moment at least, there will be massive coverage, talk, speculation, anticipation and hype about the biggest sporting event in the world.

2. It's miserable that ESPN is broadcasting the games because it means that, for a moment at least, there will be slanted coverage, ignorant talk, irrelevant speculation, anticipation of all things American and malignant hype about the biggest sporting event in the world.

3. The World Cup is not about the USA. It's about the world. Get over it. Americans can almost be forgiven their profound ignorance of the rest of the world with respect to the Olympics. After all, the media coverage could hardly be more jingoistic and the results feed the notion that the games are all about America, except for stupid sports like fencing and biathlon (i.e., sports that we are not good at, as opposed to smart sports like mogul skiing and extreme snowboarding and softball.)

4. The US has no realistic chance of winning the Cup. And guess what, that's okay. It doesn't make America less wonderful. I'd still rather be American than Argentine or Italian. Regardless of the outcome of the US-Algeria match, the US GDP is still thousands of times greater.

5. The real contenders are Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Holland, Spain, Italy and Portugal. France might complain that they belong in that field. Everyone else is competing for a good showing, much as teams in the NBA's Western Conference did this year.

5. The US-England match, which has yet to start as of this writing, is THE LEAST IMPORTANT MATCH FOR EITHER TEAM. The reason this match has received 465 times as much attention as any other is because it's the first one for the only team that counts, according to ESPN. But it's the toughest match for both teams in the group round. That means that as long as they take care of business against weaker opponents Algeria and Slovenia, both side will move on to the next round regardless of the outcome. If all were to go according to form, the US would win two and lose one and advance.

6. Luck is an immense part of the game. Because one goal has so much value, a fluke is often the difference between winning and losing. (See the Hand of God.) But in sabermetric terms, if 10 runs of VORP roughly equals a win of value in baseball, it's more like a two-to-one relationship for goals in soccer.

7. I root for teams that haven't won before. Go Spain.

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