Socking soccer to americans

Everyday is a school day. Yesterday the Fiver learned all about football fans in the USA! USA!! USA!!! It turns out that football fans in the USA! USA!! USA!!! had been, until last night, entirely unaware of the existence of 0-0 as a potential result in football, and were previously utterly unable to appreciate thrilling sporting theatre without lots of points on the scoreboard. The actual content of a match, the Fiver discovered, is an irrelevance to an American, whose brain is hard-wired to appreciate only the act of scoring, in much the same way that a tyrannosaurus’s vision is based on movement. Any attempt to explain to an American that beauty can be found in things other than the putting of ball into net would lead to their face literally melting off in confusion like those Gestapo officers at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

- John Ashdown