Sporting Math

Americanisms are so infuriatingly inconsistent, at least in the logic department.

For example, "sports" is so much more logical than "sport", since there are of course more than one of them. On the other hand, "math", in the singular, is a rather poor abbreviation of "mathematics", which is clearly plural, and therefore the Britishism "maths" has it. At least according to the Referee. And he is, after all, the Referee.

To its credit, the US media - if not its people - is making a good effort to become caught up in World Cup fever. Following the opening-match 3-0 humbling of Team USA by the Czech Republic (in which I take no pleasure at all, absolutely none), there has been an outpouring of outrage and disappointment which is all too familiar to those of us who have been England fans at any time in the past 40 years.

The New York Times astutely pointed out this week that that outpouring is the most important thing to have happened to US soccer in a long time. In other words, although the performance was poor, the public angst with which it was greeted can be taken as a sign that Association Football might just be starting to matter here, at least at the national level.

It is often said that, given 20 years or so, the omnipresence of well-organised soccer at youth level here will come to fruition and the US will lead the world. I don't buy this, as they like to say over here. Were people not making the same point 20 years ago?

The lack of US dominance at national level - to which it is accustomed in so many other sports - is not because they are not doing enough to develop young talent (they are probably doing more of that than any other country in the world), but because Association Football has not mattered here. And, because it hasn't mattered, talented kids drift away in their teens to play "football", baseball or basketball instead.

If they start to care here - if the beautiful game becomes "much more important" than life and death, as Bill Shankly put it - the rest of the world will have to watch out.

In the meantime, a word about England. Whilst my fellow countrymen are working themselves into a lather about our boys' rather pedestrian performances to date, they might not have noticed a fascinating and statistically significant pattern, which I share with you now, at no additional charge.

England won their first game 1-0. They won their second game 2-0. Can you see the pattern yet?

Given that there are a maximum of seven games at the finals, I hereby confidently - and scientifically - predict that England will win the World Cup Final 7-0.

You heard it here first.