I am not the type of guy that likes to use "we" when talking about teams. I have never scored a goal for any of my favorite team or earned a cap for either the US or Colombia. But this case I will use because I am part of the US Soccer Media- or at least I would like to think that.

Ok, those of you who do not want to let me live and love in my dream world, too bad. I was talking to a former journalist from Argentina and he was telling me about how much of a black hole the US is as far as the sport is concerned. With the exception of MLS and Guillermo Barros Schelotto, this country's desire for soccer is like Limbo to Dante. In Sunday's edition of Olé, the sports daily compares Spain's idolization for Messi with America's love for baseball. How ironic. Their always mirror the world's greatest passion with America's Pastime. They always mirror the two antithesis of sport. They always try to compare the pasttime "we" love (soccer) with the sport that wants to destroy the game "we" supposedly love (baseball).

There is just nothing more frustrating to see that people from the outside see the efforts of a Frank Dell'Appa, Jack Bell, Steven Goff and others as fruitless. Are they really looked at as the "know-nothing Yanks" when they go and cover the US in international play? I would not like to think that is the case. I talk to individuals in Colombia and they see the US as competitive on the pitch but "incompetent off of it". To make matters worse a guy like Jim Rome be part of the American intelligencia as far as the media is concerned. While some of my soccer colleagues have to be near Harvard-like when talking about the game of soccer to gain credibility, people like Rome all they have to say is "Soccer sucks" and hordes of incredulous oafs listen. There are others that talk about the game and see it as a way to play Six Degree of Premiership Football. Soccer writing in the US is not about earning money, it's about a labor of love.

I mean guys like Kartik Krishnaiyer, who outside of being a good friend and frequent visitor to our show, is doing a superhuman effort to leave a virtual vacuum that is soccer in Florida (outside of Florida) in good standing.

If there is something difficult to do is to win a rigged fight. Soccer writers here in the US are always having to climb Everest with their bare hands in order to be listened to. To make matters worse, we are all divided in our causes. While the Goffs, Dell'Appas, Bures, and Wahls of the world talk about the US, guys like myself we try to pump up leagues that are looked at as inferior by so of my anglo-speaking cohorts. My answer is always the same. If not for those inferior leagues, the ones on this end of the hemisphere would be unwatchable. There are others who think that their league is the best in the world and the game's coverage should start in Penzance and end in Dover. Let's step away from that and blaze our trail.

Ok, let me stop bitching and try to be one with solutions. I think there is a solution, but it is going to be difficult. No, I don't think that we should work on our fake British accents to obtain credibility. Our job is to let these supposed pundits know other countries in the world that think they are the ones to be listened to. We have to know more than they do. Be educated about the world game more. I know I sound like I am committing borderline treason when I say this, but you have to know about the world in order to be respected in the soccer world because without that in the back pocket, this tight group will be known as "just another Yank".