Lincicome: I'm here to tell you everything you need to know about the World Cup

There is no reward for knowing everything about soccer, which I do. I have covered it, coached it, played it. I toured with it, tippled with its legends. I lost a gig at The Wall Street Journal because of it. None of this is said with either pride or regret. It is being said because, like the locust and elections, here comes soccer again.

You may have heard that in a small natural gas oven called Qatar, a place that sticks up like a dusty thumb into the Persian Gulf, the soccer crowd is gathering, if suspiciously, for another World Cup.

The United States has sent a team, expected to be tolerated if not feared. Kindly, the Americans, young and anonymous, may be referred to as spoilers. Now, "spoilers" is not a marquee word, but then neither is American soccer.

It is generally left to a player named Christian Pulisic to speak for the rest of us, he being the face of American soccer. I can confirm that, the name, not the face, because, as I said, I know everything about soccer. Pulisic has been quoted as saying the US team (known acronymically as USMST) is on a mission to "change the way the world sees American soccer."

The fact is no one looks at American soccer, even Americans, so you are left to admire Germans and Brazilians, the French and the Argentines, even the Belgians, folks who know this is all a very big deal, not so much for the Qataris who don't really play the game and will be left with seven or eight new empty stadiums when it is over.

It matters not that it may be too hot to play soccer in Qatar, that the migrant laborers who built Qatar's instant architecture may be unpaid and mistreated, that the usual Middle Eastern intolerance is as expected, that beer, basic freedoms and civil liberties are abused, that the Cup is there in the first place because of bribes, payoffs and corruption. It is, after all, only soccer, something about which I know everything.

A president of the Italian Soccer League was once astonished that we treat soccer like a picnic. "The American public looks at a game as a day out to eat popcorn and hot dogs," he said. "In Europe the fans can't eat because their stomachs are closed up by tension."

Now, I must ask, who is the healthier?

Soccer is a fragile nuisance in America, more tolerated than encouraged, yet its tenacity is admirable. Every "no" sounds like a "maybe."

No longer do only 20 percent of Americans have any idea what the World Cup is, but a full 30 percent has caught on, according to recent polls.

I must point out that even if the figures are right, still 99 million of us do care and that is more than the population of most countries who will be kicking the ball around an Arabian emirate.

In the U.S. group are Wales, England and Iran, two friends and one foe, and, though I know everything about soccer, that is about as deep as this scouting report is going to get.

We have only so much idiocy to go around, and we certainly don't need to be wasting it on soccer. Soccer can remain a third-world badge of honor and welcome to it. Good luck to both Tunisia and Senegal, wherever they are.

We do it the best way. I think it is a whole lot healthier to call something the World Series without actually involving the rest of the world. Or to give Roman numerals to Super Bowls without asking any actual Romans.

No need to apologize about a lack of passion for soccer. I recall a sports writer for a Romanian newspaper dying of a heart attack after his country's team had beaten the U.S. a couple of Cups back.

His obituary claimed, "His joy was too great. A heart that stayed alive only for soccer was killed by the king of sports."

I guess it is possible to know too much about soccer.