ALERT: You Can Now Stop Pretending You Cared About the World Cup.

It's over. You know who you are. The fact that you still think of it as "soccer" and not "football" is just another testament to the fact that your interest in the outcome of World Cup 2006 was nothing more than a flash in the pan, a passing fad; when it's all said and done though you tried and you tried, like a gay man's feeble, awkward, misguided attempt to reach orgasm with a woman you are left standing there with nothing but your own limp cock in your cold little hand and the realization you'll never, ever get there. You can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk because Americans don't walk. They drive. While the majority of the rest of the world's peoples travel either on cheap, efficient mass transit (gasp!) or by following a dirt track with a basket of mangoes strapped to their heads, Americans spend most of their travel time trapped in vast swaths of traffic behind the wheels of ridiculously large sports utility vehicles, and the rest of the world laughs at us. This is the way it has been. This is the way it will always be. You can go to your Kezar's, your Abbey, and your Joxer Daly's and declare your unwavering support for the Czechs til the Czechs come home; you can drink pints galore and boo when the Brazilian sweeper gets shown the red card but the fact of the matter is, you don't really know what a sweeper IS because when you joined the soccer team in 6th grade, the Mexican kids were the only ones who knew how to play properly and the coach made you goalie simply because you kept trying to catch the ball. You weren't cool then and you're not cool now even though you just spent the past two weeks and most of your last paycheck buying round after round for a bunch of disappointed England fans at an Irish pub in the outer Sunset.

You need to face the cold truth. You will never be one of Them, that Mass of crazily painted faces with their booming unintelligeable chants and soul-consuming devotion. You can watch from the sidelines but let the rest of world have this thing, this phenomenon, this great game they love. Like the dude who attempts to reunite after 25 years with the girl from high school --"the one who got away"-- only to discover she's happily married to a suave millionaire, you're too fucking late, jackass. We Americans have spent the past 75 years swinging baseball bats and tackling each other over a pigskin in slightly homoerotic spandex outfits, and now it's just too late. Yes it hurts. But you have got to let this soccer thing go and take comfort in the small things. Like how we are the only english-speaking population in the world who can say the word "motherfucker" and not sound silly. When we say motherfucker, we sound tough as shit. So start acting it! Go back to your NFL and your NBA and your Oakland A's and keep acting tough and keep on calling the Yankees the bunch of motherfucking losers they are, and when the Euro Cup rolls around next summer, for God's sake, don't pretend you've been following Arsenal or Paraguay or whoever and make an ass out of yourself all over again.