I really wanted to read this whole article. Really. This was as far as I got: “Dick Cheney isn't rendered into an immortal, child-eating cyborg?” Why must we have these ugly polemics? It’s soccer for god’s sake. I don’t like Dick Cheney much either, to put it very lightly, but sometimes you just want to read something that’s not mean-spirited and snarky no matter who or what’s on the receiving end of it. It’s cheap and a sign of bad writing from an otherwise good writer. If I want ugly opinions that can’t be dropped no matter how unrelated to the topic at hand, I’ll go read Ann Coulter.

Bad enough that O’Hehir’s movie reviews take so many snotty shots at folks who dare to ever pay for a movie from Hollywood. Now he’s going to start with the negativity in sports coverage too? So much for something informative or interesting about World Cup at Salon. Sometimes Andrew, people don’t want to be reminded of your moral and intellectual superiority. Sometimes, it’s just about soccer.

It was a valiant effort Mr. O'Hehir, and I'm guessing you were the only one in the office remotely qualified to pen a piece on the World Cup, but this might have been a good one to have farmed out.

I won't detail all the subtleties you missed, but there is one oversight you should (in the spirit of football) look at again: Google Frank Lampard and you'll find he would start for all 32 World Cup teams.

Enjoy the footie.

Let me declare my prejudices straight away: I'm Canadian, a Sky Blues supporter and I support my ancestral Ukraine internationally. I live in Buckinghamshire.

The English press and the football media in particular here are in such an echo chamber, stuck in an ever increasing positive feedback loop that it's insane!

They have inflated a talented English team into near certs and, it appears, third favourites to hoist the title. I'm selling. I see a bubble ripe for bursting.

Anyway I'm off to Germany on Tuesday to see Ukraine's group games and I couldn't be more excited. We've got a smooth enough group to get through, especially if we can get a result against Spain in the opening game. If that comes to pass, anything can happen!

Вперед Україно!!

You say Lampard is just a goal-poacher. But that's a striker's job description. The best goal-poacher of them all is van Nistelroy, and who wouldn't want him? The secret is to have the precision bomber to feed him. And Mr. Beckham looks like he's fully on form. Lampard is EXACTLY what you want up front if you've got creativity and execution behind. So is Peter Crouch; I'm not convinced England is giving up that much without Rooney. And WITH him, they've got multiple options and extra wind (though I worry about Rooney's chips and beer intake when he's sidelined).

I say that as a Chelsea hater (I too pull for Spurs, which makes my mentally-crippled appreciation for the genius of Thierry Henry all the more painful). England look very promising.

Your remarks about MLS are spot on. It will never be a top league. The top leagues are in Europe, period. That doesn't mean the US isn't a potential power someday; the Brazilian and Argentinian leagues are mediocre too (a couple of top teams, and a lot of nothing else) and it doesn't hurt their national teams one bit. MLS will not only never challenge the NHL for American status, they will never challenge the Dutch league for importance. So what? Barcelona and Juventus and Liverpool are available on American TV. Tough nougats; get used to it. Soccer is finding a new and different niche in America.

One quibble: Keller is old and past it, and hugely overrated. Our defense is our weakest spot, even considering our midfield and forward weaknesses. We are fit and we are determined, and we FIND goals, but that's about it (for contrast, consider Poland's pathetic display of fabulous ball skills but brain-dead inability to find an open goal in front of their faces). We have a small chance of advancing to the second round, and zero chance of going further.

England-Germany final.

You do realize Woonjae Lee is coming with the Korean team, right?

But who the Hell is Michael Vick?

This is the great thing about World Cup play - the drama, the hope-against-hope, the unpredictable. I just watched the Costa Rica vs. Germany game, which should have been a hands-down win for Germany. But they had to squeak it out 4-2, and there were some seriously worried faces on that German bench. How could a miscelaneous third-world country have scored two goals on the home team in Europe? (This is especially suprising if you've ever watched Costa Rica play before. They're quite awful.) And it wasn't until the final minutes that Germany scored a fourth time and put themselves safely out of range of a tie.

This is the wonderful thing about the World Cup: If a great team has a crappy game, and a crappy team plays brilliantly, who knows what can happen?

That said, go USA! What a beautiful sport...

I have to take issue with calling King a 'typical American redneck', just because he is not blessed with a deep abiding appreciation for soccer and is obsessed with statisitical baseball minutuae. We just need to help him along and not mock or bash him for his shortcomings.

If only the US were mostly comprised of such thoughtful and humourous types as the Kingster...

As I write this, people at the office are commenting on “el golazo” of Germany vs. Costa Rica. Here in L. America, football is so big that every four years many companies allow their employees to watch some of the matches during office hours—as people wouldn’t be paying much attention to their job anyway.

Thank you Salon and thank you Andrew O’Hehir for the comment on this event. Hopefully more will follow during this month. Let Salon sports’ commentator talk about any other sport but football and ignore the rest of the world, in typical American redneck fashion.

Brazil is the only non-European team that has won a World Cup on European turf. BTW, no European team has been able to win the World Cup in the Americas (or in Asia, for that matter). See: http://worldsoccer.about.com/cs/worldcup/a/wcupwinz.htm

Go Brazil! Go Argentina! Go Mexico!