By LES HIGH
Commentary

Contrary to the rumor going around Columbus County this week, The News Reporter will be published Thursday morning.

I know, I know – the U.S. men’s national team will play against Ghana in a World Cup soccer match that will determine if the U.S. advances to the round of 16.

We’re keenly aware that the match starts at 10 a.m., and that everyone will be at home watching the game on the tele, but true to our mission, we will publish the paper even though it will likely be done with a skeleton crew.

Such would be the case if the World Cup had the same life-or-death meaning that it does in the rest of world, but soccer in America has a way to go before people start falling on their swords because of a humiliating loss.

ESPN, ESPN 2 or ABC will carry each World Cup match live. The month-long tournament is being played in Germany and will be seen by 1.2 billion people on TV. Ratings in the U.S. are up considerably from the 2002 World Cup, held in South Korea and Japan, but most of those games were broadcast at 2 or 3 a.m. because of the time change.

Soccer is the world’s game because it is a game of simplicity. In even the poorest regions, which also happen to generate some of the world’s greatest players – a patch of dirt, four sticks to make two goals goal, and a ball, perhaps one that’s made of rags – are all that’s needed.

Soccer will probably never be the dominant sport in America, in large part because our wealth affords us the possibilities of many sports such as baseball, basketball, football, golf, NASCAR and even bass fishing. But then again, it’s a safe bet that we’ll never have an official pastime like baseball once was because of the number of games we can play.

Soccer does have a toehold in America, however, and one day, U.S. teams will be powerhouses because of the number of children playing in youth soccer leagues now. The woman’s national team, featuring the likes of Mia Hamm, has long dominated the women’s game, but for the men, it’s been a different matter.

U.S. soccer has a growing legion of dedicated, die-hard fans. For instance, ABC interviewed one U.S. fan from Texas outside the stadium where the U.S. team was about to play its first match. The man looked like your typical Green Bay Packers or Chicago Bears fan. He had a beer and was covered in red, white and blue. He told ABC that his wife almost didn’t let him go because of the expense, but he sold plasma from his own body for eight months to earn money for the trip, and, he had the needle marks to prove it.

In the U.S-Italy match, there were more U.S. fans in the stadium than Italians.

So for the next two weeks, the World Cup will transfix most of the world.

Even Islamic fundamentalists in Somalia found out the hard way just what the World Cup means. Hard-line Muslim clerics believed that soccer exerted too much of a Western influence on their flock, so they turned off the electricity during one early World Cup match. Rioting in the streets made them change their minds.

Americans generally say that soccer is dull because there is so little scoring. But most soccer aficionados will tell you that goals are only a by-product of the play in the middle of the field – that the fakes, flicks and moves that leave defenders standing frozen like ice sculptures are what make it “the beautiful game.”

Kicking a round ball and putting it in an exact spot while on dead run is a lot harder than it looks. That’s what makes the games of players like Ronaldinho of Brazil and Tierry Henry of France special, even if they don’t score often. The things they can do with a ball are simply magical.

So for those of you who won’t be skipping work Thursday to watch the U.S. beat Ghana, here’s what you need to know about the remainder of the World Cup.

•First, you can’t touch the ball with your hands. (Okay, most of you already knew that one, so you’re well on your way). Here’s a quick primer on offsides: no one on the attacking team can be beyond the last defender when the ball is passed forward to another attacker. The offsides rule keeps players from camping out in front of the goal. The game is played in two, 45-minute halves. The clock never stops (it counts up, not down) and there are no time-outs.

•The World Cup is broken down into eight groups with four teams each. The 32 teams are determined by two years of qualifying matches played in regions. Teams in the group play each other once, getting three points for a win, one point for a tie and zero for a loss. The U.S. got placed in the “Group of Death,” which also features Czechoslovakia, ranked number 2 in the world, perennial power Italy and African champion Ghana.

The U.S. lost its first match to Czechoslovakia in a dreadful display of soccer, but came back to tie Italy 1-1 in a match where the referee ripped off the U.S. by forcing them to finish the game with nine players after he issued two ejections for questionable dangerous play.

•On Thursday, the U.S. must beat a tough Ghana team and win three points and Italy must beat Czechoslovakia for the U.S. to advance.

I don’t think this is the U.S.’s year, however. First, they’re in the Group of Death, then they get a terrible referee during a crucial game, then, if they advance, they’ll have to play five-time champ Brazil. This was supposed to be the strongest team in U.S. history, but it hasn’t been able to put the ball in the back of the net. Expectations were high in 2006 because the U.S. advanced to the final eight in 2002 after a sweet win over arch-enemy Mexico. Maybe the soccer gods will smile on the U.S. men, but that’s what it’s going to take.

•The U.S. has four ACC-alums on its squad, UNC’s Eddie Pope, (from High Point) and Gregg Berhalter, N.C. State’s Pablo Mastroeni and Clemson’s Oguchi Onyewu. Coach Bruce Arena guided the University of Virginia to five NCAA titles.

•If you don’t’ get to watch the U.S. play, watch Brazil, England and Argentina. Brazil typifies all aspects of the beautiful game. One writer called Brazil the New York Yankees of soccer, except where the Yankees are generally one of sports’ most hated teams, everyone loves the Brazilians because they’re simply fun to watch and their because of their happy-go-lucky fans.

Most of their players have only one name, such as Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kafu, Adriano, Kaka, and Fred (that’s right, Fred). Ronaldinho is the greatest player in the world. When’s he on the field, he always smiling, which is so Brazilian. Argentina has a host of young stars who play with flair. They have a shot to win it all. England, as one might imagine, is a physical team that comes at teams hard. They feature stars such as David Beckam and young phenom Wayne Rooney, who is recovering from a broken foot (when doctors cleared Rooney to play after an MRI exam, one major London newspaper’s huge headline screamed, “There is a God!”).

So between golf outings or carting kids off to baseball practice, check out what’s got the rest of the world abuzz. You might even see something beautiful.