A few days back I posted an entry about how I doubt I will be able to cheer for the U.S. national team at the coming World Cup, because I have developed an animus towards Jurgen Klinsmann, the coach who dumped Landon Donovan.

That provoked some reaction, some of it more than a bit tart. “We don’t need fans like you.” “Good riddance.”

Which is fine.

But one of them annoyed me.

“Who are you?” was the whole of the email. 

The underlying meaning being … “why do you have a right to an opinion?”

All of us are entitled to opinions. Some of us may be a bit more informed than the average fan.

So, I will recap my soccer bona fides. I have been out of the U.S. for 4.5 years, so it’s not like I have been in print in the States lately.

I covered the U.S. national team when most Americans may not have known we had one. Back when I thought the U.S. would never embrace soccer — when I was coaching my daughter’s AYSO team.

My first U.S. match was a qualifier for the 1986 World Cup. It was played at El Camino College in Torrance, California. On May 31, 1985. This was back when the best U.S. player was Ricky Davis. After the NASL. During the dark days of U.S. soccer. The coach was Alkis Panagoulias, a Greek, who said the world would never understand the U.S. if it continued to ignore soccer, which certainly seemed possible.

All the U.S. needed was a draw to advance to the final three, one of which would qualify for Mexico 1986.

The crowd at El Camino was almost entirely Costa Ricans, and the Ticos won 1-0. (Canada eventually won the berth in the World Cup.)

Four years later, after a time when I had showed enough interest in the U.S. team to become the unofficial/official Gannett News Service soccer writer, I covered the scoreless draw with El Salvador at St. Louis Soccer Park that was nearly disastrous to making the 1990 World Cup — which some then (as now) are sure was a requisite for the U.S. remaining hosts of the 1994 World Cup.

I was there at Port of Spain, Trinidad, for the Shot Heard Round the World. When the U.S. qualified for Italy 1990.

I stayed at the “Upside Down Hilton” hotel. The whole of the print press corps was about seven guys. All of us were invited to brunch at the U.S. embassy, which sits atop a hill, before the match. We could see Venezuela in the distance.

A police escort into the packed and heaving stadium, where Trinidad fans were chanting “search and destroy”. No TV in the press box. George Vescey was one of the U.S. reporters there, and another was Filip Bondy.

All Trinidad & Tobago needed that day was a draw to go to Italy 1990, but Paul Caligiuri scored in the 30th minute, and the mass of red-clad fans fell silent, and that goal stood up — and the primitive locker room was thoroughly doused with Champagne. Some of it got on me; Champagne gets sticky as it dries. It was glorious.

I covered several of the foreign friendlies ahead of Italy 1990, including the game against Hungary in Budapest, followed by the friendly with East Germany in Berlin. A great trip — which is what really drew me to soccer, truth be told. The international aspect of it, and the travel.

I saw the U.S. lose to Switzerland in St. Gallen a few days before the World Cup started. I drove all night after that match to get to Florence, where the U.S. was based. I nearly ran out of gas.

I covered Italy 1990 from start (Italy 1-0 over Austria) to finish (West Germany 1-0 over Argentina). Two days before the first U.S. match, I told Eric Wynalda we (well, me) had decided he was “the U.S. guy most likely to get a red card”. Because he had been short-tempered and edgy till that point in his career. He smiled, laughed and said, “Will never happen.”

And then the U.S. played Czechoslovakia, in Florence, and lost 5-1. In that match, Wynalda was red-carded for a push. A day later, at the team’s camp at Tirrenia, near Pisa, Wynalda saw me and said, “I bet you’re happy now, asshole.” (And I liked Wynalda.) “I said, ‘Why am I happy’?” he said: “Because of the red card.”

I covered lots and lots of friendlies ahead of the 1994 World Cup. Many of them were played in Southern California, and that is where the U.S. team based. For some reason, I remember Iceland being there, at Mission Viejo High School.

I once interviewed Bora Milutinivoc while driving him from Mile High Stadium, in Denver, to the team hotel, before a game with Uruguay.

I saw all four U.S. games in 1994. Including the draw with Switzerland in Pontiac and the victory over Colombia at the Rose Bowl, and the 1-0 round of 16 loss to Brazil at Stanford during which Leonardo threw an elbow that fractured the skull of Tab Ramos.

I covered France 1998 from start to finish. I was in at the Olympic training site in Chula Vista when Steve Sampson used bags of artificial sweetener to show me why a 3-6-1 formation was a good idea.

I was in Lyon for a week to be near the U.S. camp, ahead of France 1998. I was in Paris for the loss to Jurgen Klinsmann’s Germany, in Lyon for the loss to Iran, in Nantes for the loss to Yugoslavia.

I saw France beat Brazil in the final at the new Stade de France.

I covered the 2002 World Cup during the group stage. Including the amazing victory over Portugal, which I wrote about this month in The National, here in Abu Dhabi. The draw with South Korea. The loss to Poland. I remember the heavy security around the U.S. team hotel, a year after 9/11. But Landon Donovan got me past the guys with bulky suit coats and showed me the view of Seoul from the U.S. team’s floor.

I was assigned to cover the 2003 Confederations Cup, in France and saw the U.S. defeats to Turkey, Brazil and the draw with Cameroon. In the semifinals, I saw Cameroon’s Marc-Vivien Foe die on the pitch. On a hot afternoon in Lyon. France won over Cameroon in the final.

I have covered the Yanks in Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium three times, and in El Salvador for a qualifier in 2009.

Since coming to Abu Dhabi and the UAE, I have spent a lot of time on domestic soccer (Ghana’s Asamoah Gyan plays here, as does Ecuador’s Felipe Caicedo), and I covered the biggest victory in UAE history — the 3-2 game in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that put the UAE into the London Olympics. And I went to England and saw the UAE’s games with Uruguay (at Old Trafford) and Team GB (at Wembley) and Senegal (in Coventry).

I readily concede this: At no point in my life has soccer been my favorite sport — even now, after being thoroughly immersed in soccer from the time we got off the plane in the UAE, a soccer-mad nation. Even when about 90 percent of all sports on TV I watch here … is soccer.

And I will not be in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup — but as sports editor of The National I will be deeply involved in our daily nine pages of coverage of it, much of it from our two writers on the scene.

So, yes, I have seen quite a bit of soccer over the past 30 years, more than most Yanks, I think it is safe to say. And I have known a lot of the guys who played for the U.S. the past two decades. And I think I know when a coach is giving a player a raw deal.

That’s who I am.