A spotlight is periodically cast upon a glaring anomaly in American sports when competitions like the World Cup or the current regional competition – Euro 2008, in all its glory – are underway. The rest of the world has long been attuned to the rapturous excitement of football. Real football. The kind in which a foot meets with a ball – decidedly unlike American football, which many wisecrackers have suggested would be more appropriately titled “Throwball.”

Still confused? Do I really need to use the s-word? Fine. Yes, I’m talking about soccer. (How Americans have managed to single-handedly rename a sport that is otherwise globally accepted by its original name is another topic for another day….)

The Beautiful Game, Indeed

On the professional level, this sport is as exciting and fast-paced as anything the NBA or NHL can offer up. What’s more, this is a sport with huge cross appeal…even for those ladies who can’t tell a puck from a pole vault. Why? Total-package types like Beckham – skilled athletes with photogenic mugs and ripped physiques – are pretty much a dime a dozen in Europe, Latin America, and the rest of the world. (Technically, this may be understating their actual value a tad – the top footballer’s salaries often eclipse the Gross Domestic Product of many small countries.) At any rate, I’m sure there’s a more profound reason why real football has been nicknamed “The Beautiful Game,” but I’ve never gotten around to pondering what that might be. There’s way too much magnificent man-candy prancing around the pitch.

Take Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United’s crown jewel, who recently strutted through American Vogue’s pages with all the aplomb of a professional underwear model. Most frauleins wouldn’t kick German captain and Chelsea striker Michael Ballack out of bed for eating strudel there either. And Andriy Shevchenko is arguably the most enticing Slavic export since glasnost. The list of comparably pretty players goes on – as do their resumes, which are typically bloated with lucrative commercial endorsements.

While the above examples merely take spectators (the female ones, anyway) on the scenic tour through the rest of the world’s fascination with football, the game’s inherent excitement speaks for itself. When countries go toe to toe in the World Cup, there is no headier or more widely anticipated competition in the universe (unlike America’s “World” Series of baseball, which is confined to U.S. teams only).

And still we Yanks resist the otherwise universally irresistible siren call of, “GOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!”

A Brief – Really, Really, Really Brief – History of Professional Soccer in America

Football/soccer has been kicking around at a low profile, grass-roots level amongst U.S. school-age kids and their minivan-driving maternal units for a while now, but our professional American league – the MLS – has been sputtering along for barely more than a dozen seasons. Theories abound as to why the sport has taken so long to catch on here.

Many argue that American players just don’t measure up to their European and Latin counterparts. Yes, it’s taken the migration of a photogenic, endorsement-endowed superstar like David Beckham to begin to capture real American interest in the sport, but many purists argue that Beckham didn’t exactly bring his A-game to our shores. Not that this has harmed his appeal any. In fact, so successful has Beckham been at selling L.A. Galaxy T-shirts and paraphernalia, the Galaxy are now rumored to be courting Brazilian legend Ronaldinho – another megastar whose wattage has been slowly dimming over the past few years. Not surprisingly, some pundits insist that MLS will at best become a place where has-been international greats will be put out to pasture after they pass their sell-by date on their home turf.

Scarcity of talent is but one theory behind our country’s historically lukewarm reception of the sport – although this overlooks the financial angle that inevitably looms large. Until Yankee football/soccer gets a cold hard cash infusion (which will, in turn, attract the A-level talent), how can our watered-down version of the game possibly measure up to the international gold standard?

Ah, but herein hatches a veritable what-comes-first?-The-chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Where will the cash come from?

Our (Pint) Glass is Half Empty – Though Commercial Sponsors Hope To Top It Off With Bud Light

MLS games are typically broadcast on ESPN, and the assorted international league games most often find a home via outlets like Fox Soccer Channel or Gol TV, as opposed to the more widely-viewed major American networks. Why? The game is just too dang fast-paced to allow those pesky gadflies of U.S. televised sport – the dreaded commercial break – to find a landing spot.

Yes! You read right. A major sporting event can actually be watched without commercial interruption in most other parts of the world! (Gasp!) But wait…how can the multinational conglomerates that hawk wares like beer, aftershave lotion, hair transplants, and home gyms possibly profit from a sport in which there are few, if any, commercial breaks?

They can’t? Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Is that why the major networks couldn’t care less about promoting this sport?

The other day, one of the Euro 2008 quarter-final matches was atypically broadcast on ABC, which resulted in that annoying screen-within-a-screen format that allowed for the requisite word from our sponsors. Worse, game commentators actually had to break from covering the game long enough to provide commentary for the commercial. Comparable dual-paned pain was inflicted upon viewers when the 2006 World Cup games met up with the brick wall of rampant American consumerism.

This culture clash nearly wrought even more disastrous results when the 1994 World Cup was hosted by the U.S., prior to which certain American corporate sponsors and network suits lobbied hard to (a) carve the game up further from two halves into four quarters (all the better to inject twice as many commercials during the breaks), and (b) widen the goals so as to allow for higher-scoring games, which they opined would be more appealing to American viewers unaccustomed to the sport’s traditional format that has served the rest of the world just fine.

I’m sure this in no way contributed to the list of reasons why other nationalities often stereotype our citizens as mental midgets with serious entitlement issues and abnormally brief attention spans only observed in crack-addicted lab monkeys.

The Post-Game Analysis

On the one hand, an influx of players of Beckham’s stature can only ultimately elevate American interest in football/soccer. On the other hand, it’s still not likely we’ll be enjoying the top-flight version of the game that the rest of the world enjoys if our country is merely going to become the sports-equivalent of a Vegas lounge, where once-awesome legends come to cobble together a few last moments in the spotlight (and a few last coins in their coffers) before being fully assimilated back into civilian life.

Who knows what the solution is. But I hope someone will figure out a way around the obstacles that have thus far prevented football from receiving due recognition in this country...because we’re missing out on a truly beautiful thing.