Actually, I can appreciate your love of soccer from a nationalist/nostalgic perspective, which is why I am not antagonistic to the international aspect of the World Cup. Indeed, I am much more sympathetic to this kind of fervor than to the ridiculousness of my countrymen who start fist fights over whether the White Sox or Cubs are the better team (these are two baseball teams in the same state).

A lover of American football once tried to intellectually explain its appeal along the lines that it is a tactically sophisticated game. As long as visions of screaming masses, drunkenness, and other unappealing social gatherings pervade my overall impression of most sports, I do not think that such explanations will be very effective.