Lucas made another good point about soccer in a comment to my last point about the World Cup, that much of the game is spent pretending you were injured to try and get the other player thrown out of the game. When I was at the gym the other day, there was a World Cup match on and it was halftime of a 0-0 game (after about 3 "penalty minutes" haphazardly tacked on to the end of the half).

During the halftime show, they showed a "highlight reel" of the great plays of the first half. It consisted of 2 clips. The first was a player getting kicked in the shins (keep in mind these players wear shin guards, hard plastic and foam that protects their shins from being kicked), falling to the crowd, screaming in agony, and lying motionless on the field while the rest of the game continues without him until finally the referee stops play so he can be attended to by an army of trainers and then continue playing 2 minutes later. The second was someone taking a shot on goal that was so off-line that the goalie didn't even move to attempt to block it. Those were the high points of the entire first 45 (+3) minutes of play?

Then there is the US team, which lost today. In their 3 games combined, they took 4 shots on goal. That's not a typo, that's just a single number 4. Now, you could argue that the team just didn't play well, but four shots in three games? There were only 4 chances for a US fan to get even remotely excited in 270 minutes (+arbitrary penalty time) of mindless kicking and injury-faking, yet people wonder why soccer isn't more popular in America?