It’s the final week of the NBA season and the Western Conference is still not settled. The NHL playoffs are about to start, and a very intriguing Masters just ended. The MLB season is underway, with the Blue Jays leading the most talked-about division in baseball and the Astros doing their best New Jersey Nets impression. A Steeler and a former Steeler are making headlines for being less than responsible off the field, and college basketball’s elite players continue to flee for the money and poor officiating of the NBA.

So it’s time to talk about soccer.

Yeah, yeah, you’re probably saying that soccer is boring and looking for an article about an American sport. Everyone loves to bemoan soccer’s lack of goals and point out everything that is better about watching American football or basketball or paint drying. It’s the cool thing to do to talk about soccer being un-American. Soccer is for Europeans and South Americans, right? Just like hockey is only for silly Canadians (unless the U.S. decides to suddenly do well, then everyone is a hockey fan).

I’ll admit that I have not been completely immune to some of these sentiments. For years, I only watched football, basketball and baseball on a regular basis. I played soccer, and it was fun, but everyone always told me that soccer doesn’t work as a spectator sport and no one cares about it in America. So I believed it.

Only in recent years, with significant help from FIFA video games, have I really grown to love soccer. Of course, it takes some getting used to. If you’re expecting bicycle kicks and hat tricks in the first two minutes, you’ll probably be disappointed. When you get past these ideas about what you think soccer is, it can actually be a fascinating game, packed with strategy, stars and as much controversy as any sport in the world.

Clearly, soccer is not as popular in America as some other sports, and nothing I say is going to change that in the slightest. Some people don’t like soccer, and I can’t get mad at people for that.

What really annoys me, though, is when people who talk about sports for a living don’t have baseline knowledge of soccer. As anyone who knows me or reads my columns can tell you, I watch a lot of ESPN, and I love it. While I am very grateful for ESPN’s soccer coverage of several important games, including the upcoming World Cup, it baffles me how little everyone on ESPN who isn’t a soccer analyst knows or cares about soccer.

Just last week, I was watching SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays, which is always one of the best segments of the show. I had watched that day’s Champions League showdown between Manchester United and Bayern Munich, which was a huge event throughout Europe and ended up being a thrilling contest. My friends and I had decided to root against ManU just because it would have been more fun to see the upset, and Bayern Munich came back from a 3-0 deficit to score two goals and win the aggregate on away goals (ask your local soccer fan for a translation).

In any case, two plays from that game were amazing enough to make it into the top 10 plays of the day. Yet the SportsCenter anchors were busy talking about another play during the first highlight and only made a weak joke about Nene and Nani while ignoring the miraculous back-heel goal from Nani that put ManU on the board. I thought this could have just been an isolated event, but later, the ridiculous volley by Arjen Robben that ended up putting Bayern Munich through to the semis received a similar fate. Robben’s goal was the big sports news of the day in the non-American world, and it was as spectacular as it was important.

The reaction of the anchors – mispronouncing Robben’s name and saying “oh, around the defenders, nice” – was about the reaction a parent makes to a goal made by the other team in a youth soccer game. It was the equivalent of watching The Catch by Dwight Clark and saying “he was in the end zone, cool” or watching Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beater and saying “he caught the inbounds pass and made the shot, good job.”

I couldn’t believe sports enthusiasts could say so little about a sports achievement as impressive and important as these goals. I even watched a later episode of SportsCenter that night to see if they could correct their mistakes, but the second time was no better.

I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but it really isn’t. Important games like ManU-Chelsea and Real Madrid-Barcelona get maybe one play on highlight shows, and anchors act like it’s just a sideshow.

Yes, fans of these shows probably care more about LeBron’s dunk than Messi’s goal, but you’d think sports people would do the work to learn about the best players in the world.

I’m no soccer expert and I won’t pretend to be. I know several people (Americans, no less) that know and care tons more about the sport than I do. But that’s just it: lots of people know and care about soccer (after all, it’s the most popular sport worldwide), so why can’t the media accept it?

There will always be dissenters – people will say that soccer doesn’t get the kind of viewers that other sports get, and that soccer is stupid and boring. Some of these people might even say that to this column. But no one can deny that soccer is a major sport, even in America. And if you’re going to learn the name of Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief, learn the names of the best soccer players in the world.

Jacob Jaffe is memorizing the name, hometown and favorite color of every player on ManU’s roster. E-mail him to track his progress at [email protected].