a few days ago, my Brazilian friend Luc and I were making fun of how Brits have hung onto 1966 ever since it’s been 1966. as I mentioned earlier, every World Cup is ‘England’s this year!’ and every year [aside from 1966] it isn’t. there’s a certain charm in the country continuously backing their boys and then, a few days later, continuously moaning about how ‘they invented every sport and continue to be shit at it’… but rest assured that whoever says that will more than likely be the first to throw St. James Cross on their back the next go-around and believe – truly believe – that this year is England’s.

today I was invited over to a neighbor’s party, a mostly-older crowd which meant they had no qualms about being drunk on Pimm’s at 3pm in the afternoon. we watched England barely beat Slovenia and they even offered up a genuine cheer when the announcer announced [thus - doing his job] that the ‘United States had scored in penalty time to defeat Algeria’. considering this put us above them in our respective bracket, it was a very nice thing indeed. I came home and celebrated throughout Facebook and Twitter as only people my age can do – and then the talks went to if we could actually pull it off… and it got me thinking.

I hope we don’t.

and that is me being more patriotic than you think.

look, I could write paragraph-after-paragraph on what it must be like growing up in poor countries where all you have is a dirty ball to kick around. the spirit that surrounds every nation as that every-four-years begins – no doubt many before me have written about it. and everyone pretty much knows what I’m getting at here.

if this finds you with any doubt in your mind what the world’s most popular sport is, then, well, let me help you out:

it ain’t baseball.

sure, we have the World Series, but let’s be honest, it’s hardly a series of the world. same goes for the Super Bowl the Finals and anything else that can easily be punctuated with an exclamation mark to make it exciting… but this is the only event where 99% of the world takes part even if they’re not taking part. and nowhere is that more evident that England. Mel even commented yesterday that her business had a ‘hard time finding a bar in London to rent out for clients as they were all already booked’ – this is the first round of the Cup for and bars are fully booked!

think about that – we’re still weeks away from the final matches and they’re already booked up.

well, it ain’t that way back home. fair enough, we’ve got enough things going on sports-wise, what with the ‘big four’ – but that is exactly why I hope we don’t succeed. it has nothing to do with us not deserving it – may the best team win. what it does have to do with is the accolades said team would receive upon coming home. quickly Google any country’s celebration post-world-cup-win – it’s pandemonium. insanity. and a good insanity, not like our American Parody’s in Los Angeles. it’s mayhem. joy. and the players are gods for the rest of their lives.

but it wouldn’t be like that for our boys.

oh sure, you and I and everyone else who’s spent 2 days in London only to return supporting an obscure Premiership Team all in the name of impressing others would make a big deal out of it, but it wouldn’t be anything noteworthy in the States. there’d be a small parade and Sportscenter would make it their lead story, but be guaranteed they wouldn’t talk about it much as some ‘girl’s game’ is no match for finding out if the Twins won that night. our boys would be bigger everywhere else in the world than their own country – little Obama’s if you will – and it simply wouldn’t be fitting.

so play on, boys. and play hard – in my hope of hopes, it’s to get you all the way to the semifinals and then lose to Argentina. Maradona would say something great about our squad and maybe that would make the press and we actually start paying attention to it [read: putting some serious money in it] and then, in 4-8 years, we would win… with a captive home audience.

an appreciative home audience.

a home audience who would realize that winning this is bigger than a gold medal.

but until then, until we recognize David Beckham as something other than ‘the guy who’s married to Posh Spice’, until we don’t get the inside joke of Landon Donovan touching ‘the hand of God’, until we don’t find ourselves taking off work to watch a match and then telling the honest truth the next morning about simply being ‘too hungover to come into work’, we don’t deserve to win.

our boys might, but we as a country do not.

and let’s be honest, we’re just now getting back to a good place with the world liking us again… winning a sport we still don’t know all the rules to?

let’s hold off.