Much hype surrounded the talented U.S. U-17 national team during the Fifa World Cup in Nigeria. Ultimately, the team fell flat, losing in the round of 16 to a classier Italy side. And so the mumblings have started, gnawing into America's rotten system of developing professional players. "Is the Academy system the best way to develop players?

I watch most U.S. national team games cloistered in my own soccer nerdom, hunched over a computer or slouched at a friend's house where I can bitch freely about the team's dry ideas and dire first touch. This is how a lot of us watch games.

Throughout my life I've been both types of fan, loyalist and leach, depending on the sport. There is logic and even romance in each. But as I age I'm attracted more and more to the latter, to the Chuck Klosterman sort of sports fandom that resembles musical taste – polygamous and fickle. I think this is common for a lot of modern sports fans, the mass consumers of entertainment that we are.

To all those who rode their first wave of U.S. soccer fandom into the hot Mexican dust, welcome! Brush that dirt off your coat. Hang it up. Stay awhile. And chin up for god sakes. It's not that bad. I'm here to help you through it. There are just a few things you should know so you don't make rookie blunders like buying an Eddie Johnson jersey or dislexifying Onyewu's name.

Maybe you had too much too fast. Maybe you had too much too fast.
Or just over played your part.
Nothin shakin on shakedown street. Used to be the heart of town.
Dont tell me this town aint got no heart. You just gotta poke around.

Freddy Adu was once pure potentiality.

Alexi,

What's up you leather-faced buffoon? Last time I saw you I was probably putting the ball through your legs. Or blowing lines off your wife's potatoes after your country banned me in 94'. You're lucky I didn't get you on the field. Just kidding. Have we met before? I don't remember.

* This is the last time I'll write on WPS for a while, I swear. Unless SI hires me to do "The Marta Experiment" or something.

American citizens pay more attention when Lady Gaga burps on television than when New Jersey's Sky Blue FC wins the WPS championship.

Bill Simmons, one of the most beloved messiahs of American sportswriting, is getting into soccer. I wish him the best, although I have a feeling he has no idea how big of a plunge he is about to take. His new attraction to the sport should make for an interesting experiment with fans of mainstream American sports.

Manchester City is like a black hole that has opened up in the fabric of the Premier League. Sucking mass, masses of expensive players and media attention, it leaves many fans unsure about how to approach the club's awakening and limitless powers. Some laugh. Some wince. Most shake their heads, confused and afraid, especially those millions of fans of any of the now comparatively-less-rich Big Four, which constitute most of the Premier League fans here in America and elsewhere outside England.

Touch down in Mexico City, this is gonna be a blast
Touch down in the Valley baby, this is gonna be a blast

Out on the open airstrip, breath of dying horse's ass.

Tour Azteca at dusk now, this place is kinda scary
Tour Azteca's big shadows, this place is kinda scary

Out in the parking lot, I hope the hooker's spare me.

Our team drank beers in afternoon light on the bleachers after a men's league soccer game. Behind us, a Latino man stumbled out of the shadow of a tree. His calloused heels scraped the pavement through the holes in his sandals.

Ah, summer soccer in America. When we can finally kick back, crack an ice cold Miller Lite, and take in some of that industrious Major League Soccer all of these scallywags have been talking about ... oh you've got Stella? Wait, Barca's playing? Maybe next year....

In a lot of ways, foreign club tours of America have exposed just how secondary MLS's secondary status is even in its home country compared to foreign soccer.

I love soccer. And I'm pretty sure I love women. So why don't I love Women's Professional Soccer? Or do I, secretly? These are questions I fear to answer because any serious soul-searching might uncover the misogynistic pig within. That, or I'll end up stripping away a vestigial layer of macho-callous that has kept me straight and largely insensitive to the needs of women through the years.

Alright, alright, fine – blogging isn't journalism. Lines divide the two fields. Professional journalists get paid, for example. Us amateur bloggers usually don't. We toil in the nervous spaces between working on the internet and "working" on the internet, or between trips to Starbucks and withdrawing more trust-fund money.

Dear Alexi,

You seem like a pretty cool guy, for a ginger and a hippie. Actually, that's why I like you – cause you're a ginger but you make fun of yourself for being a ginger. You're like, ‘yeah I'm a goofy ginger, What? I'm still pretty cool and funny could probably kick your ass, so if you can't look past my gingerness then like screw you dude.