This comes up every four years. Or every four years after the U.S. national team has, at least, made the second round of a World Cup. Like this time around.

“Is soccer about to make a breakthrough in the U.S.?”

Will it be mentioned in the same breath as football and baseball and basketball? Or hockey, even?

Well, no. Not yet. It could happen someday. Probably will. But not yet, and here is why:

U.S. soccer interest is very narrowly focused — on the U.S. national team and, even more narrowly focused, on the U.S. national team when it is in the World Cup.

Americans love the World Cup. (For those who have been talking up soccer for 50 years that, at least, is a victory.)

Americans like all big events. We are nuts about the Olympics, probably more so than any other nation on earth. (Remember, U.S. rights fees to the Olympics pretty much pay for the Olympic movement.)

And the World Cup, we have discovered, is similar to the Olympics in its international scope and an occasion for Americans to feel particularly nationalistic.

But the exoticism of the other teams is appealing, too. At the Olympics, you don’t see Ghana showing up with a serious team. Or Algeria. Or Iran or Costa Rica or Colombia.

Thus, a sudden surge in interest. Americans in the tens of thousands assembling in front of giant video screens. All sorts of people you hardly knew cared about the game .. suddenly setting their schedules to allow them to watch the U.S. play Slovenia. Or whomever.

More people than ever watched the U.S. team this time around, but at the end of the 2-1 loss to Belgium in the final 16 … a huge fraction of that interest evaporated.

Where soccer falls down in the U.S. is the lack of a significant connection between U.S. soccer fans and a particular club team.

That is what nurtures the game in the rest of the world. Deep attachments to a club.

Those four years between World Cups are about Liverpool in England and Bayern Munich in Germany and Real Madrid in Spain and PSG in France … and, in cases of countries with small or financially strapped leagues, they also follow the biggest clubs at Europe’s biggest leagues.

Probably two-thirds of all humans, creating a stat, have an opinion on Real Madrid and Barcelona. They root for one, and hate the other. It keeps interest alive year round. And Europe’s Champions League is closely followed in most of the world that is not North America or India.

When the U.S. went out of the World Cup, American fans were faced with the usual options.

–Attachment to Major League Soccer clubs, which are doing fairly well, these days, and next year there will be 21 of them … but the MLS does not begin to rival football, baseball and basketball and, for that matter, not college football or college basketball, either.

They are perceived as members of a lesser league, and the MLS is a lesser league. (Though, interestingly, MLS has the ninth-highest average attendance of any soccer league in the world, ahead of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia, etc.)

The MLS standard seems to be rising steadily, but the best MLS team clearly is not on the same level as a middling team in the English Premier League or the German Bundesliga or Spain’s La Liga.

So, the LA Galaxy and Columbus Crew and DC United … do fairly well, but they inspire far, far less interest than does the national team at the World Cup.

–Attachment to foreign clubs. This is a little weird, for Americans, because we don’t generally sink our emotion and money into teams on the other side of an ocean. (Which is not the case for the Big Four of football, basketball, baseball and hockey – the best teams are all right there in the States, or just across the border in Canada.)

It is hard to watch the European clubs play, and interest is instantly splintered. Italy’s league? France’s? Which team? Playing at 10 a.m. in the U.S.  More and more leagues are available, another gain, but only a small minority of Yanks can speak with any authority on what is going on in Italy’s league.

It is difficult. Far more difficult than keeping track of the nearest baseball team or college football team, which may be within an hour’s drive.

So, with the U.S. out of the World Cup, the fade of American interest begins anew. A fanatic few will resume their support of the Seattle Sounders or the Houston Dynamo, etc., but the fellow travelers of the World Cup weeks, the large majority, that is … they are on to the next thing.

It helps not at all that maybe half of the U.S. team plays outside the country. Can’t go buy a ticket to see Tim Howard play at Everton.

And then everyone is keenly aware that the Americans among the 11 guys the Portland Timbers are running out there … were not good to play in the World Cup. So you need to learn who those guys are, and deal with the fact they are not among the country’s best.

I expect this will change, gradually, as more generations are brought up in the U.S. playing youth soccer.

But a big bang, corresponding to this U.S. national team?

No. Didn’t happen after the quarterfinals in 2002, not after the final 16 in 2010. And it won’t happen now.

The game will recede into the background again, followed by the hard core and those with connections to foreign clubs … and for the foreseeable future hockey’s champions will get bigger parades than whoever wins Major League Soccer.