I wrote a comment piece for The National today, looking at the United States soccer team, now assured of playing in a seventh consecutive World Cup.

On the eastern side of the Atlantic, we must assume the majority of our readers know little or nothing of American soccer.

They would refer to it as “football”, of course, even those by now aware of “American football” — which is how they would distinguish football (soccer) from that American game that is so not “football”.

What I have found interesting, after nearly four years in the region, is how similar the attitudes/opinions in the Gulf are to those in Europe, when it comes to U.S. soccer.

To wit:

Only about seven or eight countries matter, in the world of soccer.

The most capable of European teams, of course: Germany, Italy, now Spain, The Netherlands, maybe France and Portugal.

And, of course, the two big South Americans: Brazil and Argentina. The former is surrounded by a sort of instinctive reverence; even the weakest of Brazil sides (like that of Dunga, in 2010) will be much caressed. No such piety surrounds Argentina; they are seen as a nation capable of producing many very good players, but (sadly) lacking the grace and flair of Brazil, stereotypes that might need a century to wear off.

And one other soccer country matters here: England.

The English find it hard to come to grips with what English football has become, on the international stage. They know perfectly well that their own Premier League is down to about 33 percent Englishmen, and that their countrymen rarely take advantage of the chance to improve themselves by playing on the continent, apparently unwilling to live among foreigners … but even after all that by the time Brazil 2014 kicks off, they will have talked themselves around into believing England is a real candidate for the Jules Rimet Trophy, even if half the team will be made up of the doddering remains of the “golden generation”.)

The next part of the soccer world view is that the rest of us — from North America to Africa to Asia — exist almost entirely to “make up numbers”, as the British expression goes. You know … 32 teams. Can’t all be from Europe, though perhaps they ought to be. Along with Brazil and Argentina.

None of the teams from those three continents, which could total as many as many as 14 World Cup teams, in Brazil, are expected to do anything beyond, perhaps, a couple of them reaching the Round of 16. Though at least one African side will be credited with high spirit and great physical talent, but alas, a sad lack of tactical nous. (A word well-worn in the pages of British newspapers.) Not a real threat, that is. Not the final week of the tournament.

So, writing about American soccer, over here, you have to make it fairly basic, or risk losing your audience. To mention anyone who hasn’t played in England (Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Stuart Holden), well you may as well have pulled a name out of a phone book. (For those of you who remember phone books.)

North America and Asia each are accorded no chance at all, not even the puncher’s chance of a Ghana or a Nigeria or an Ivory Coast.

Meantime, Mexico generally has a very nice team, one no sane European-Brazilian-Argentine would actually want in their group, given that Mexico has made the knockout stage of every World Cup since 1994.

And here are the Yanks, in seven straight World Cups, though out of a sadly weak region. (Honduras? Costa Rica? Really? They would never qualify out of Europe!)

As we know, not many of the players on the U.S. national team play for the kind if clubs that most of the football-mad world focuses on — in the Premier League, in Spain, Germany, Italy and France. And those few Yanks who have found their way to one of the Big Five Leagues generally play for their lesser teams.

A key to remember is that a national team is is evaluated, over here, by how many of its members play for a major European league. And then by how large the subset is of those who play for one of the super clubs in those leagues. And the U.S. has no one playing for either of the Manchesters, for Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Dortmund, AC Milan and Inter, PSG and Marseille.

I will address this at greater length in some future post, but when describing why the U.S. is a generally worthy foe, it is necessary to invoke some intangibles.

Some of those were mentioned in the piece in The National. Teamwork, cohesiveness, a still-refreshing joy of playing for the national team that is eroding in club-dominated Europe, certainly. (Playing fewer games, annually, than many Euro-based players also could be a factor.)

The Yanks also are known for being in good shape and for never giving up on a game. (Remember Slovenia 2-0 at South Africa 2010? It ended 2-2, the only comeback from a two-goal deficit at South Africa 2010. Most of the world would have just accepted the inevitability of defeat and moved on … or gone home.)

The Yanks are considered technically primitive and tactically naive, though Jurgen Klinsmann is thought perhaps able to bring a European realism/cynicism to the team that it lacked, especially under American coaches. (Part of that is time-wasting and diving, tacky concepts Americans still resist embracing.)

Mention was made of Project 2010, and how it turns out not to be as silly as it seemed, when it was released, back in 1998.

The Yanks are not going to win the 2014 World Cup, but if the current team gets healthy and stays healthy … no one should look forward to playing them in Brazil. This part of the world has not really grasped that yet.