It’s nearly a day after the United States was eliminated from the 2010 FIFA World Cup by Ghana.  A tournament where not a single goal was scored by our attackers.  The second tournament in fact where not a single striker netted a goal for the USA.  And that’s why thinking of the tale of Giuseppe Rossi is all the more painful.

He is the star of American soccer that never was.

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America, welcome to the Beautiful Game.  There was no way you missed this goal.  This beautiful goal by Landon Donovan.

The story of soccer in the USA mirrors my own journey in the game.  I started late in life, 16 in 1993.  I played for a minnow in the football landscape in Oklahoma, Stillwater.  The powers in Tulsa and Oklahoma City routinely beat us 9-0 or worse.  So when the World Cup came to the States in 1994 and I saw a collection of Yanks that were disregarded, over-matched, and mocked by the rest of the soccer world, I did more than cheer for my country.  I was out there playing with them.   Their victories were my victories.

There is no sport or even a combination of sports that can approach my love for U.S. Soccer.  That’s why I have to tell you about this goal and what it means.

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The World Cup is well under way and already, its tearing the Internet apart like a German in the Rhineland.  Experts are calling it the biggest web event ever … yes, even bigger than Greg Oden’s penis.  So I thought to myself –  why not offer my American (and thereby non-soccer) friends an easy guide to the teams and culture of ‘football’.  Let’s start with Italia.

There are few countries that have mastered the art of proper football more than the Italians (see Brazil).  Soccer is the only sport that matters in the Boot.  Their credentials are impeccable.  Four World Cup trophies (1934, 1938, 1982, and 2006), an Olympic Gold (1936), and a European Championship (1968).  The names of their players rank among the best that have ever played – Paolo Maldini, Roberto Baggio, Silvia Piola, Giuseppe Meazza, Paolo Rossi, and many more.  As with most world powers in soccer, the paisano have a definitive, unique style in which they play the World Game and it is for this that they have become universally known.  And often … mocked.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Azzurri.

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The final 32 teams of the FIFA 2010 World Cup have been decided, the nineteenth grand tournament of world football.  It is bigger than the Olympics.  It is bigger than the United Nations.  It is bigger than World of Warcraft.  I am happy to say that my country (THE United States of America), the place where I live (Australia), and the lands of my heritage (Germany & England) have all made it.  I am sorry to report that our despised rivals Mexico have also been included.  As second place in CONCACAF I might add … second place to deez nuts!

Sorry.  Sometimes I get distracted.

Anyways, I’ve got a plan on how the United States can win the 2010 World Cup, our first major FIFA trophy and the first country outside of Europe or South America to win said trophy.  We’re huge underdogs, but if we can get my plan in place then I’d say we’ve got a good to great chance. [Read Column]

Stillwater High School Soccer.

Few organizations can boast such a fruitless, ineffectual record of utter failure and disaster.  I present to you a collection of approximately 25 young men in Stillwater, Oklahoma that trained diligently under professional coaching yet could not have executed the World Game more poorly if we were playing on a mud slide of yak feces with waffle irons tied to our feet.  I am simultaneously horribly ashamed and strangely proud of my participation of this endeavor in 1994 and 1995. [Read Column]