Major American sports reflect American culture. Like most ‘American Idol' contestants, American sports strive, scream, pander, and pose--but they can't sing. American sports are indulgent, filled with incessant scoring; they are hyper competitive-a draw is not allowed; they are technological, filled with gadgets and bizarre equipment-helmets, bats, gloves, strangely shaped balls, hoops, artificial surfaces, and expensive shoes.

Football is a corporate sport; with its rigid hierarchies and extreme specialization, it mirrors the reality of the contemporary American workplace. Baseball is mainly an intellectual pursuit, slow and deliberate. You can't enjoy baseball without understanding it, and it's not easy to understand.

Baseball is compelling only insofar as it generates statistics to mull over, memorize and obsess about. Basketball is crowded and vertical, like a city. It pushes up in a confined space, and since the teams are small, the balance of importance is heavily tilted, as it is in America, toward the individual player.

All major American sports lack fluidity; they move in fits and starts like rush hour traffic, in part because they must obey the harsh dictates of American capitalism by allowing frequent commercial breaks.

Soccer, on the other hand, is simple, egalitarian and, quite literally, down to earth. A stuffed sock and a patch of dirt is all you need for soccer. Soccer is open, fluid and poetic. It sings. And since goals are at once so rare, meaningful, and unpredictable, you have to watch the whole thing uninterrupted. To see LeBron James score, you can turn on a Cavaliers (oops, Heat) game at any point. To see how any American sport will end, you need only tune in to the final minutes. If the game is any good, the last minutes will determine it.

Not so in soccer. In even the greatest match, the definitive moment may come seconds after the opening kick, or seconds before the final whistle. In soccer, as in life, you never know. The game is at once demure and seductive, a tease; it flashes and then withholds its ultimate gratifications and is hence infinitely captivating. In soccer, it's not only the goal that electrifies, but also the possibility of a goal, the dream of it. A soccer ball finally in the net is a little miracle, a reward made ever sweeter for being eternally elusive and uncertain, like life's few victories.

American sports are promiscuous, all climax all the time, and hence ultimately bereft of mystery and allure. Soccer, like life, yields only a few, unpredictable successes and many more near misses, mistakes, and dashed hopes. In soccer as in life, the defining moment is often an opportunity missed rather than a goal scored. In soccer as in life, sometimes you end in a draw, and the rivals share the points and go home feeling bittersweet.

In soccer, no one is ever really in possession of the ball. Because it cannot be manipulated by hand, the ball is only in your temporary, fleeting, and fragile custody, and always belongs first and foremost to the game. The ball, the most essential property in the game, is therefore a fleeting, elusive presence, like a spirit-a communal spirit. The most essential soccer skill is the pass. The pass is always a risky, tentative, fragile hope--a prayer. In American sports, the ball spends most of the time in someone's possession. In soccer, the ball is mostly somewhere in between players. Soccer, like society, exists mostly in the shared space between people.