What's needed to love the game of soccer

I was on the edge of my seat this morning watching the World Cup contest between the U.S.A. and Algeria. And when Landon Donovan scored that goal in the 91st minute, I screamed, lept from my chair and danced gleefully around the room. (The fact that I was home alone at the time made the spectacle far less embarrassing than it could have been.)

I was giddy. The American team had gone from the brink of World Up elimination to winning its group with one deft kick of a rebounded ball.

It was only later, after I had a chance to digest my emotions, to review my history with the sport, to recall conversations with other sports enthusiasts who find soccer boring beyond belief and to remember a lot of the things I had read and heard about soccer in the U.S.A. that I realized what it really takes to enjoy the sport: A passionate involvement with a team. Not just a passing fancy, or an admiration, but the kind of passion people usually reserve their college sports teams -- that kind of fanaticism that expresses itself in people wearing pigs on their heads to collegiate events.

There's a lot of talk about how so many kids around here play soccer and then lose all interest in it when they get older. That's because, while their parents are desperately and passionately rooting for their childrens' teams, after this experience is over they really don't have any other teams to root for. Let's face it, Major League Soccer still isn't cutting it, not the way the English Premier League does or the French, Italian, Spanish, German, Mexican or South American leagues do.

As for me, my nationalistic pride has me passionately rooting for the U.S.A. in these World Cup games. Realistically, I know they don't have a chance to win it all, But that degree of passion invested while watching a soccer game - especially one tied 0-0 when just the slightest event, lightning quick, can turn the entire game around -- makes soccer, to me, among the most exciting sports played on this planet.

But, if you don't have a team, you don't have a prayer and you're never going to understand why the rest of the world loves this game above all others. Not until every hamlet in America starts its own soccer team and gets its citizens invested in its success, will Americans really understand what makes this game so breathtakingly exciting.

Go U.S.A.!!!