When the Angel of Death comes down after me, I'll smile and say, "I grew up without ever playing a minute of sanctioned youth soccer," and this will make me a very unique individual indeed. Currently, as with every Saturday, there is a mass of little legs magnetically following a ball in the park below my window. For the eight- and nine-year-old mosh pit down there this is supposed to be a game, some character will hopefully be built and it will all be mostly forgotten by the time they are teenagers. This is the American way.

But as with other suburban touchstones like recreational drug use and limo rides to prom, soccer was not a part of the western Nebraska public schools curriculum. (Save that stuff for the big-city bedroom communities. The Ralstons, Millards and Bellevues of the east.) No one I knew played sanctioned soccer.

Our few recess experiments with the world's most popular sport took place on a hilly dirt field that was 90 yards wide and 250 yards long. The entire back line was one giant goal and oftentimes four goalkeepers were employed to supply adequate coverage while entire classes teamed up, 20 or 30 to a side, to pepper the four poor souls with shots. Give up a goal and the offending keeper had to immediately punt, or "sky-bomb" in the parlance of the times, the ball back to the opposition as punishment for his or her futility. It wasn't soccer, it was war, and that is something we understood. This is the American way.

***

In 1993, a foreign exchange student/invader arrived from Sweden and bunked up with a classmates' family. His name was Peter Saal, and learning of his European proclivity to kicking things, he was quickly named the starting place-kicker for the high school football team and went on to routinely shank extra points. Frustrated by his failure with the oblong ball, he decided to try to spread the soccer gospel in our rural community. In a lot adjacent to the junkyard, four goals were erected and we were instructed to arrive each Saturday to learn the game.

I went and juggled and dribbled with every one else, but the game never really took. As one of the few mustachioed seventh graders, I was quite accustomed to exerting the puberty-power afforded me in the traditional American sports. A new game and level playing field didn't interest me. Dominance did. I went on to set a junior high football world record for touchdowns scored on tight end reverses and Peter Saal went home, dejectedly dribbling a ball from the Stockholm airport to his Scandinavian home.

***

Twelve years, three World Cups and approximately 4000 shaves later, I'm ready for this year's tournament. I'm excited. I'm a hypocrite. Somewhere Peter Saal is smiling. He has finally won the upper-hand and it is all because of a rattlesnake.

Living for three years with a roommate who exclusively watched the Fox Soccer Channel, I started to learn a bit about the game. I now know that standings are printed in "tables" and teams wear "kits" not uniforms and Palermo's "kits" are pink and they don't seem to care. (For me, the perfect example of the Euro-exoticism and