Please, for one second don't think that I could really care less who wins the long, drawn out World Cup, which will mercifully come to an end when Italy takes on France in the Finals Sunday night in Berlin. Don't get me wrong, I rooted internally for the Americans and tipped my Miller Lite to a few people in the bar when they tied Italy, but all in all, it's not our Sport. It's the rest of the world's, and I'm happy for them for being so in love with it. But France? F'n France? I'd rather Iraq win this thing.

Here's my take on soccer. I don't like it because of the way most kids start playing it in this country. It reeks of overprotectiveness and fear. It vomits the word yuppie. It's the soccer mom scenario in full bloom, where young children are forced out onto fields to run around like electric football players for 3 hours watching a ball go back and forth like a pinball inside a circle of what looks more like midget rugby players than would-be soccer stars. Most of these kids are forced to play by their parents, who drive a Beamer and a minivan and won't let their kids climb the lowest branches of a tree because they might fall down one foot.

I hated those kids when I was young. I still hate them now, and the thing is, it's not their fault. I coach 8-10 year olds in football, and many of them play both sports. Five years ago, during my first season coaching and in our first playoff game, we had a kid named Brian who missed about 3 practices a week due to soccer because his mother didn't really want him playing football and she obviously was more of a man than her husband. And that's fine. The kid had speed too, for a nine-year old, he could really motor. We're down 6 on our own 40 with one last chance so we decided to go to the air, a rarity at that level of football unless you have that special kid. Brian was a wing, and he slipped out into a flag pattern untouched, wide open. Our QB rolled left and actually set his feet, followed through, and gunned a strike down field to the futbol-er waiting about 20 yards away.

He dropped it. Game over.

Now, here is what I will never forget as long as I live. And while I preached afterward that we win as a team and lose as a team, I wanted to piss myself in laughter when this moment happened. The quarterback, having his season shattered, walks off the field and without a hint of sadness or surprise in his visage, says to me, "What do you expect? He's a soccer player."

That will always live in my mind about how kids grow up playing that sport in this country. Until you get to a certain level, the sport only preaches "activity" and friendship and fun. Sure, those are great, and they should be a huge part of every organized sport. But what about team work? What about commitment? What about the discipline? Those are what I learned in sports. Those are what European and South American soccer players learn, because it's their bread and butter. They have nothing else. If your kid isn't making it in soccer, he's probably not going to fulfill daddy's dreams. Daddy won't have anyone to live vicariously through.

It's just not our sport. That's all. And lets get something straight now. These men playing in the World Cup are some of the world's most amazing athletes. Their stamina and endurance are dumbfounding. Their passion is unwavering. In a country as large as ours, you're going to find a bunch of people to throw out there and not embarrass themselves, just like China does in basketball, or South Africa might in baseball. But it doesn't mean we're a soccer nation.

So, here we are, with Italy and France, and all this hullabaloo over one match, where men will give their all running around a field as big as Rhode Island for an hour and a half+ for it more than likely coming down to a set of one-on-one battles where one guy shoots at a net bigger than Shaquille O'Neal's garage from 8 feet away, with only about a 25% chance of hitting it. Wow. That's exciting.

But for the record, go Italy. You have better food. You have better mustaches. You provide better immigrants with funnier stereotypes. You provide organized crime, which gives us movies like the Godfather, and Donnie Brasco. You have towns where the cabbies drive boats, and your country is shaped like something, unlike France, which is just shaped like Arizona but tilted. For all that, and the thought of the words French and dominance being linked in any sentence wanting to make me puke shards of my own pelvis -- "Italia! Italia!"