Discussing
Why World Cup whining is blind to the beauty of sports

To reduce the World Cup to a cultural thermometer is to torture creation into telling us what we want to hear.

There is beauty (and ugliness) in so many things. You're absolutely right to extend that to soccer.

As a sidenote, I *do* think that regardless of its history, the culture of soccer has grown apart from mainstream American culture. Soccer is really basically not very American, even if it didn't have to be that way. But what has grown apart can come back together again. I think you're already seeing that with the very successful MLS. You should see how fanatic the fans are in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.