Long-time soccer basher Frank DeFord

Over there across the pond, Steven Wells takes a look at why U.S. players should like the ridicule they get – soon it could be resentment. He’s got some things dead right:

Meanwhile respected US sports journalists - having ignored the sport for the past four years - will Google like fury and emerge as venerable soccer experts, shoving aside those junior hacks who spend their entire working lives trying to squeeze a mention of the game into a monolithically monocultural sports press.

Long-time soccer bashers like Frank DeFord will dust off their tired complaints about how their beloved "American" sports fail to generate one tenth of the passion of international soccer. They might point to this year's hilariously spatchcocked International Baseball Competition and the sad fact that - as the US's Olympic basketball tournament proved - American sports have become so insular that US national teams can't even dominate those games that they (more or less) invented and which no other bugger really plays.