as much as I even envision our soccer as an ambassador for international goodwill well beyond the sport; I have already started to retreat from euphoria to the equilibrium of the status quo. The status quo includes the cram down of economic reality. The US already has professional soccer. The TV ratings were at record levels this World Cup for soccer. Those ratings are still far behind American football. The reality is that last year 34 of the most-watched television shows in America were NFL games. The marriage between the NFL and TV networks has never been better. Is that reality going to change because of this courageous World Cup performance? The reality too is that we are virtually at the same place we FIFA Coins were after the last World Cup in South Africa, knocked out in the first match after Group level competition, in the extra session. Then there is the media exposure and influence issue. Are we so dependent as a country on the mainstream mega-TV networks for our imaging that whatever they choose to show is what we choose to prioritize as a sport? Are they the creator of our interest or only a messenger conduit through which we view ourselves? In other words, will American fandom create its own “Occupy Soccer” movement that leads to a new sports football reality? Here’s why I am not so optimistic. Every four years the networks give us their best World Cup advertising, their best hero-creation schemes, their best pro-USA slogans. So far, nothing has taken root. I have advocated that this time is different. This time, we have shown that we compete with the best “eye-to-eye” as the US coach put it. But even if those with far more media muscularity than me wax poetic over the next few days, will we watch soccer the way we watch our football during the dog-days of non-World Cup competition? It is hard to forecast a result that history has rejected. Then again, if history is all there is, everything about the future would be redundant. We can point to any aspect of life to see evidence of change. In my view, the change would have to be a bottoms-up “Occupy Soccer” movement. The media moguls would have to be convinced by us, the fans of American sports, that we will view soccer like we watch American football. Only then will soccer compete in this country for prime sports space in our hearts, minds, and pockets.The Home-Team Advantage In The World Cup -- And Beyond. If you were one of the hundreds of millions of viewers who were surprised last night when the Japanese referee,Yuichi Nishimura, awarded the struggling home-team team, Brazil, a “ridiculous” game-deciding penalty against Croatia in the opening game of the World Cup, after the Brazilian striker Fred delivered a brilliant acting performance in appearing to have been pushed down in front of the Croatian goal, you shouldn’t have been.