THE WORLD'S GAME (ACCORDING TO US)

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LDU to Fluminense: "Na na na na na na, you don't get a trophy!"

In America, soccer is often considered a kids game, not really worthy of adults. If we judge by recent events on the international stage, there might be something to that argument.

For one thing, soccer is full of sore losers. Take Brazilian rivals Fluminense and Flamengo. When Fluminense lost in last week's Copa Libertadores final to Ecuadorian team LDU, Flamengo players mocked them at practice (Never mind that Flamengo lost weeks earlier). The Fluminense players fumed. It was like a playground shouting match:

"Loser!"

"Who you calling a loser, loser?"

"You, loser!"

And so on.

The sport is also full of ungracious winners. Spain, for example, danced beautifully around Germany in the Euro 2008 final, but was less graceful during the post-game press conference, when the team formed a conga line and, chanting for España, interrupted loser Bastian Schweinsteiger as he was interviewed on TV. (We admit we watched this video about 20 times with a perverse desire to figure out whether Schweinsteiger was laughing or crying).

When players haven't been taunting one another lately, they've been involved in complicated games of Whisper Down the Lane. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, is surely going to Real Madrid. How do we know this? Well, someone told someone, who told Rafael Nadal, who told a reporter, who told us. Maybe Nadal's not a soccer player, but he's famous, so he must know the truth, right?

If that's not silly enough, did you hear about the player who revealed his illicit training with an opposing team on Facebook? Guess he thought only his "friends" would see it.

If soccer is a childish game, perhaps we can blame the man in charge of it, FIFA President Sepp Batter. This is, after all, a man who once said that "more feminine clothes" would improve women's soccer. His suggestion: "They could, for example, have tighter shorts."

Blatter's most recent juvenile behavior surrounds the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. For a long time, when he was asked what would happen if preparations for the big African tournament didn't proceed smoothly, he would say, "South Africa is Plan A, Plan B and Plan C." Blatter has always been a strong supporter of African soccer, but some say the support is based on a series of bribes and kickbacks that helped extend his seemingly infinite term as global soccer tsar.

And now, preparations for the Cup are not proceeding smoothly; the winds have changed. The other day Blatter announced, "I would be a very negligent president if I hadn't put away in a drawer somewhere a plan B." It's a cryptic, self-contradictory statement that sounds a bit like the hollow threat of a teenager. The FIFA equivalent of …

"What are you gonna do, Sepp?"

"That's for me to know and for you to find out."

EXTRA TIME

• Who once scored 16 goals in four games? Japanese striker Masashi Nakayama, of course.


• Swoosh! Adidas defeats Nike in the game of worldwide exposure, a.k.a., soccer kicks tennis' ass.


• Gaddafi must be psyched. Libya won the Arab beach soccer cup.


• Canadian soccer moms picket to save a local field. We smell a Disney movie.


• Can MLS score West African soccer talent by hitting up former player Mamadou Diallo?

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