As a grown man whose family is from Boston you inherited, at a very young and impressionable age, the disease known as sportsacholism.  You HAD to love the Sox, Pats, B’s and C’s.  You had no choice in my family and to add to the insanity you were supposed to cheer on the USFL’s Boston Breakers and the NASL’s New England Tea Men.  If you didn’t you were locked in a box (my Dad called it solitary) for 2 weeks with only water and an Easy Bake Oven to survive on.  When I was 5 years old I had my very own Tea Men shirt, which I wore on class picture day.  I loved and still love soccer and as fired up as I was over last night’s Sox win it was just another game in a long grueling season.  Today begins the greatest month to come every four years.  The feelings I have for the World Cup are the exact opposite of how I feel about a leap year, because of all things, a company can squeeze an extra day of work out of you for the same salary during a leap year, while World Cup is pure bliss, unless of course your team blows a 2 goal lead in extra time or chokes on liverwurst. 

In my lifetime I cannot remember a field of 32 being so stockpiled with talent.  The usual powerhouses like France, Italy and Brazil are there, but there are a lot of new players on stage that are set to topple the kings.  The Czech’s are strong.  England is finally back with their best squad in two decades.  Heck, even Mexico has a nice looking team.  Best of all, team USA is running out its best team ever.  They are better than I think some people want to believe and to tell you the truth I don’t blame them, because the Americanos have yet to prove they belong with the elite, but now is their chance and the expectations have been placed heavily on their shoulder.  For the first time I truly believe they are going to cause some damage and break some hearts.

Why am I writing about soccer?  Nobody cares you say?  Guess what?  I live in Boston.  The passion for the world sport is all around us.  We are a melting pot of footy passion.  Every team will have a group of fans in a bar or café at all times this next month.  You cannot help but be consumed by it.  I love immersing myself into the middle of two “warring” nations of insane fandom.  The greatest match I have ever watched in public was England versus Portugal in the 2004 Euro Cup.  Honestly, I have no historical passion for either team, but you can’t help but be sucked in by the people and their deep, emotional, love for their mother country.  I used to work in an office with people from Brazil, Japan, Turkey, Russia and France.  Four years ago was the best time we ever had together.  Since the matches were played at such odd hours overseas BBC Radio became our best friend.  Note to my readers, if you don’t like the team that ABC puts out then mute your tele and log onto the best way to listen to a match.)

Aside from my enthusiasm for what is about to occur, I’ve also been dreading this for months.  As many of you already know the kids from America are in the same group as the Italians AKA Azzuri.  This means two things.  One they are guaranteed to play each other and secondly either could be responsible for the other not making it out of the group and into the single-elimination portion of the tournament.  I always dreamed they would meet in the later rounds, but this is KILLING me.  My soul is being ripped apart by the thought of seeing my home country playing the one that produced the man who produced me.  Calgon take me away! 

It’s going to be a great match, but one that potentially could be unfairly balanced.  Some of Italia’s best are injured, including my favorite player of all time Gennaro Gattuso (Please click through to his website as it is the epitome of Euro Cheese) but they have depth and can survive the temporary loss.  You also have to hand it to ABC and FIFA for scheduling the match on a Saturday afternoon.  The ratings, I’m guessing, are going to be the largest ever for a World Cup match televised in the States.  We're going to be watching from the crossroads of Boston's North End, which means the entire neighborhood is going to be rocking.  As for the Americans they just need to pour it on with their youth and speed.  They have to attack every team like they are down by 2 goals with 3 minutes to play.  Basically, they need to play hungry.  Actually, that’s wrong, they need to play like they’re starving and in a way they already are.  They are starving for national support, a world-class professional league and most of all respect from the rest of the world.  They need to go deep to change the perception of billions of people and nothing says they can’t do it.  I hope they do, because they could single handedly increase the sales of the mini-van market by 3000% and wouldn’t Daimler-Chrysler just love that?