Untitled post #32

Well, it's about time for me to cut out of work early and go watch Brazil kick the crap out of Croatia. I leave you with the wisdom of Dave Eggers:

It's inevitable, given the way the U.S. teams are improving every year, that eventually we will make it to the semifinals of the World Cup, and it's likely, one would think, that the United States will win it all in the near future. This is a country of limitless wealth and 300 million people, after all, and when we dedicate the proper resources to a project, we get the job done (see Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq).|link|

Oh, wait, here's a thought of my own (spurred by the opening paragraphs of Eggers' article). The popularity of youth soccer in the U.S. is one of the reasons that the U.S. isn't very good at soccer. This is because American youth soccer is just barely a sport. It's kids running around with no particular idea of why they're doing it. It's tag with a ball but without purpose. It isn't, in short, the sort of activity that one improves at or cares much about improving at.