Shame about the US team. I won't drone on about our failure, but questionable officiating aside, Ghana's been playing like they belong, and, for the most part, we haven't. At least for two out of our three matches. I know we played nothing but great teams, but I'm surprised with how a #5 ranking can start to seem so utterly mysterious.

I'm also surprised with how much I care about this.

Soccer's been a subject of American ridicule ever since our Founding Fathers, it seems. I know because I've partaken in that ridicule feeling that it was my constitutional obligation, and because Americans have been playing it like delicate pansies compared to the rest of the world. But consider the idea that soccer threatened to overshadow the NBA Finals this summer and contributed to the invisibility of this year's Stanley Cup. Granted, Carolina vs. Edmonton wasn't exactly the clash of the titans that would otherwise remain embedded in the American consciousness for all time, but remember when World Cup soccer was that way?

Fencing's really more of my sport, so I can relate to the continuing stigma of impotence that male soccer players carry; our women can kick major ass where we can't. Since they were way ahead of the global curve, winning the World Cup hasn't been a novelty for American women for some time now; they're just waiting for the guys to catch up. Much like soccer, America is struggling to gain some clout in men's fencing, but it will take plenty of time because fencing's just not our thing, man. Fencing's for elitist, cheese-tasting Frenchmen. Just like how soccer was for girls.

But the latter changed back in the day when a couple of boys got a backbone and said, "No, Dad, I don't really want to play football this year," which is something that provoked disownment in some places. Did these boys care that American soccer was, as a matter of public acknowledgement, a girl's sport?
No!
Thus began a youth movement for popularizing an alternative to football/baseball/basketball that was seen as slightly manlier than gymnastics. And eventually this smashing of stereotypes would yield threatening consequences to the rest of the globe's superiority.

No longer would the US settle for being inferior at the sport just because we "never really liked it, anyway." A lot of Americans do really like soccer now -- many in my generation are borderline fascist about it -- much to the confusion of their other countrymen.
And I see more interest in this little game every four years. While we didn't exactly set aside civil war (Ivory Coast) to watch our team play soccer, the World Cup was quite a presence in America this year. After their recent showing, though, I certainly doubt the our team will enjoy the same hype in 2010. But we will have a contending team in the next decade to come: I'm sure the Soccer Mom Generation will see to that.