Or Johannesburg.  The US and UK will be battling it out on the soccer field tomorrow in the first round of the world cup.  Soccer has never been that interesting to me-it’s unquestionably effeminate compared to real football, not nearly as strategic and intellectual as baseball, and hardly the ‘everyman’ sport that golf is, where even an old, overweight white guy with no fashion sense can play.

But soccer does have an enormous international following, and so we’ve tried to acclimate in our two years in Latin America.  Watching your country’s team can be fun, especially when you have a foreign friend nearby who can explain “why the players are so quick to fall down and act as if they were truly injury when clearly they aren’t even hurt”.  I admit to great feelings of superiority when watching such toddler-esque displays while glancing at the calendar to see just how far away the first pre-season NFL game is (8 August), when even QBs and kickers wouldn’t dare put on such a display.

As with many competitions it is more enjoyable when you have friends on the opposing side that you can bet against, tease, bait and otherwise have fun antagonizing, and of course no one is more fun to do this with than the Brits.  In my experience the Latinos are a dangerous group to dish it out with because they take this game so damned seriously and might actually get ‘disrespected’ and before you know it there’s real anger.  At least the English are accustomed to it, if not from Americans on whom they routinely look down their toffee noses at.

Along those lines there are some great thoughts on this matchup from the WSJ:

But to the English that’s an incomplete scorecard. It doesn’t take into account the hefty defeat of 1776 (an early showing for the Tea Party crowd); the late winner the U.S. scored in 1781; the thumping victory on away soil the English achieved in 1812; the repeated own goals in 1956—when the U.S. managed to beat England, France and Israel, all together; or that very long game that lasted from the late 19th to the early 20th century and which resulted—after overtime and penalty kicks—in England finally ceding its crown as Political, Economic and Military World Champions to the ill-bred upstarts from across the Atlantic.

Then there are the cultural scores to settle: the defeat represented by all those GIs who stole away British women while the men were off fighting in the Second World War; the terrible trades that saw England provide Jane Austen and Charles Dickens while getting John Grisham and Dan Brown; or the deals whereby the U.S. got Cary Grant and Bob Hope, the other side Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow.

And on it goes. Almost every week now the newspapers are full of new humiliating reminders of England’s eclipse at the hands of America. Last month it was the ignominy of British troops in Afghanistan placed for the first time under a U.S. general. In February it was Cadbury, the makers of the only culinary delicacy in which England could muster any pride—delicious, creamy milk chocolate—forced into the barbarian arms of Kraft, a highly successful American purveyor of synthetic cheeses.

The UK expects to win tomorrow, and the oddsmakers would agree, giving the match 6:1 odds, which suggests it could be a very long day for the US team.  That won’t stop my boys and I from getting together with a group of English, Irish and Scotch friends tomorrow and waving the stars and stripes.  If we win I might even drive by The King’s Head and taunt the assembled Brits.

Related:  Subjects are evaluating their new leaders with penetrating analysis:  “Who is more posh?”