Soccer will never become a mainstream professional sport in the United States.

I’m not saying this because we lost or because I’m a soccer hater. I was really excited for the World Cup. In fact I recorded the US games and shut out the sports world those days so I wouldn’t find out what happened until I was able to watch them. But when so much of the game rests in the hands of an official I have a problem with it.

Sure there are bad calls in other sports but in those sports there are multiple opportunites to legitimately score. If you go down a goal in a soccer match (much less the World Cup) you can pretty much forget about winning. That is why the missed calls are so frustrating. Why should I invest my valuable time to see some guy fall down and clutch his face in agony after being tapped on the shin? I guess the Americans should learn how to dive better…