Excerpt:
The football (oops, soccer) World Cup starts June 11, and while billions of people around the world will spend the monthlong competition glued to their television sets, Americans as a nation won't share the same interest in the tournament, despite their team taking part. Indifference is one thing--Americans already have football, baseball and basketball to follow--but what really irks soccer fans is when soccer is denigrated as an un-American (read: socialist) sport.
One of the most disparaging and oft-repeated slurs of soccer came from Rep. Jack Kemp, who told Congress in 1986 that "a distinction should be made that football is democratic capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist [sport]." But when Kemp's football (he was a former star quarterback) and soccer are compared it's clear that the reverse is true: Karl Marx would be cheering for American football ahead of the soccer played in Europe and across the world.