I may not care about the MNT like I do the Pats, but even without a strong rooting interest, this is just about my favorite sporting event of the year. The national pride and craziness of the fans can't be beat in any event. For all the pageantry of the Olympics, nobody cares half as much. When I lived in Boston in the 1990s, I would travel around the city to various pubs to watch games with expats who were berzerk for their team. I followed the Italian World Cup from the old North End cafes in 1990, where 70-year-old, 1st generation stogie-smoking Italian Americans held court. In 1998, I spent days going on a series of pub crawls/pedals, where we'd catch a game in an Irish or English pub, an Italian restaurant, and a Maverick square bar (although we took the Blue Line for that one), where younger, drunken expats would exclaim for every touch. In 2002, I'd go to bed early, just so I could wake-up at 2am to catch a key game played in Japan with the Mexican or Brazilian fans who lived in the apartment complex behind my house. (The US defeat of Mexico in the round of 16 was a high point, and I did my best to be a gracious winner, despite my face-splitting smile.) It's a month-long, international sporting party in the dead part of the American sports calendar. What could be better?
