The adjective for "pertaining to Niger" is Nigerien. Nigerian means "pertaining to Nigeria".

I think I'll always be ambivalent about the US in international competition.

For a little background, I'm a Brazilian who has lived most of my life in the US. I'm fairly assimilated, even to the point of naturalization, but as far as sports go, I'm still Brazilian. This means that I still follow the soccer team I grew up with (Corinthians), and watch their games on satellite TV and sing their anthem when they win something important. And of course, it means that I have my heart in my throat when Brazil plays in an important match.

But this accounts for only a small part of my hesitant attitude towards US soccer. The main reason I can't fully get behind US soccer is that it's guaranteed that anyone the US beats cares much, much more than the US ever will. When Brazil plays an important match, almost everyone in the country is watching, and if we win there are parties in the streets all across the country. If we actually win a World Cup, there are parties in the streets all across the country for days. This is most pronounced in Brazil, but pretty much all countries feel this. The Champ Elysees was flooded with cheering throngs after they beat us 3-0 to win their first Cup. The Greeks streamed out into the streets with their flags, champange and fireworks after they won Euro 2004 in the largest celebration since democracy returned in the '70s.

I just don't see this level of feeling ever happening in the US. Instead, I think most Americans would shrug and think "Nice for those boys", if they even noticed. In effect it would be like nobody won. To me, this would be tragic.

First off, the reason the annoucers don't say anything about diving is that ESPN's soccer announcers are lame. They're so lame I always watch the Univision coverage, even though I don't speak Spanish. At least the Univision announcers sound like they're interested in the game.

Anyway, good for King if has managed to force himself to watch a few games, but hopefully this is the last we'll hear of the Cup from him. Ever. I don't see why he should waste his time or ours writing about a subject he doesn't know anything about.

I'm not one of those soccer fans that needs to convince others that they need to love, like or even tolerate the game. I don't care if anyone in the U.S. ever watches soccer ever again. The Jim Rome type stuff is so tired that I tune it out automatically. The truth is, soccer needs the U.S. like the proverbial fish needs the proverbial bicycle. Americans can go on hating soccer and it's no skin off my nose. What does get annoying is the "I've watched five whole games now, and here's my list of improvements" attitude. Soccer has nothing to gain by changing its rules to suit the tastes of a few ignoramuses.

Every four years, the American sports press suddenly notices soccer again (probably because it preempts the poker on ESPN2) and they crank out a bunch of lame articles. Next time, don't bother adding to the junk heap.

As has been mentioned by others, soccer and stats are largely incompatible. The only ones that are ever really mentioned are goals and saves. Everything else has to be made up artificially by bean counters.

In soccer, instead of stats people talk about a player's "form" or how he's playing overall. Fox Soccer Channel has an interesting analysis tool that allows them to address that. They call it the Virtual Spectator or something like that and it shows arrows describing the passes a player made, at which point in the game, and if they were successful or not. This is a pretty good visual representation of the kind of performance that a player had in a game, and it's much more relevant to the questions of who is likely to win a game or to do well in a tournament.

Even more generally, graphics and stats like this are another reason why longtime soccer fans abhor ESPN's coverage. I'm sure that graphic was gigantic and covered most of the screen while the game went on behind it and that's not counting all the other junk that ESPN just normally has on the screen, like the bottom row ticker and so on and so forth. Univision usually has only a small bar with their logo, which half it is, the team names with scores, the clock, and a small ad. All this is about a couple inches at the top of my 20 inch screen and all of it is useful information, except for the logo and the ad. Occasionally, there will be a graphic for how much stoppage time is left or for who just received a card or the details of a substitution. Otherwise the game is what features.

And by the way, if you're ever wondering what fascinates soccer fans, take a look at the goal that Joe Cole just scored for England against Sweden. He just took a ball on his chest and volleyed it into the top right corner of the goal from 30 yards out. The Swedish keeper got his fingertips to it, but it was not enough to keep it out. Two touches and a goal: a thing of beauty.