They announced the United States World Cup soccer team yesterday. This was a big deal on ESPN, which has decided to try to convince Americans to see in soccer what the rest of the world sees and in The New York Times and The Washington Post, each of which carried two major stories on the naming of the 23-man roster. One thing I couldn't help but notice in looking at the roster: Only FOUR of the 23 players on the U.S. roster are currently playing professionally in this country on teams that compete in The Major Soccer League. That's just not enough.

I have said this before and I will say this again: I am not one of those people who rip soccer just because there are times when it seems that no one ever scores. In fact, I watched a chunk of the U.S.'s game--or 'friendly,' as these exhibitions are called--against the Czech Republic and there were plenty of goals to watch in the Americans' 4-2 loss. On the other hand I am not someone who is going to sit here and claim there is nothing like the artistry of a 0-0 tie that has 14 corner kicks or that those who don't see the beauty in the game simply don't understand the game.

I will certainly watch The World Cup. Whether I will watch very many entire games is another question although the U.S. opener against England on June 12th is one I'm curious about on several levels: England should be one of the better teams in the tournament so we'll probably find out a lot about the U.S. in that first game. Beyond that, I've probably watched more World Cup soccer FROM England than anyplace else, dating back to the long-ago days when I spent a lot of time there every summer covering Wimbledon and The British Open.

In fact, I was in a London pub with my friend Tom Ross--who in spite of being an agent is a good guy--for Maradona's infamous Hand of God goal. The reaction to the goal and to its being allowed and to Argentina winning the game is one of my most vivid sports memories. If you were in that pub that night you would never again call The World Cup boring.

As I've mentioned here before soccer was my first beat at The Washington Post when I started there as a summer intern 100 years ago (okay, 1977). In fact it was soccer that allowed me to meet Bob Woodward for the first time. I was covering The Washington Diplomats, then Washington's team in The North American Soccer League. I had taken over the beat from Donald Huff, who was going on vacation and the first two games I covered the Dips--as they were called--were shut out. That made three straight games without a goal.

As I was leaving RFK Stadium that night I said to Terry Hanson, then the Dips PR director, "geez, I wonder if Dennis (Viollet who was then the coach) might be in trouble." Hanson, who has now been my friend for more than 30 years, looked at me and said, "If I were covering the team I'd make some phone calls tomorrow."

Eager young intern, I did just that. No one would take my calls, a pretty good clue something was up since normally soccer people would come to your house to get publicity. Finally, I got Steve Danzansky, the team president on the phone at about 9 o'clock at night. Even though I didn't know Danzansky well I had found him to be extremely outgoing and friendly. When he picked up the phone that night the first thing he said was, "you've got a lot of nerve calling my house at this hour."

Now I KNEW something was up. I apologized for the intrusion and said I wondered if Viollet might be in any kind of trouble given the team's goal drought. "Well," Danzansky said, "he isn't exactly a candidate for coach of the year right now is he?"

Whoops. By the time I hung up the phone with Danzansky I knew Viollet was done. Soon afterwards I reached him on the phone and he told me there was a press conference the next morning and that assistant coach Alan Spavin would be there--without him. I had enough to write.

George Solomon, the sports editor, stripped the story across the top of the sports page because it was late June and nothing else was going on. Washington had no baseball team and the Redskins hadn't opened training camp yet. The next morning I was sitting at my desk--which, as luck would have it, was only a few yards away from Woodward's desk. Being in The Post's newsroom was a thrill for me at that point in my life; being a few yards from Bob Woodward made me feel slightly faint. This was not long after "All The President's Men," had come out in theaters. I had read the book and had gone to see the movie three times--in one day.

So, when Woodward approached me with a smile on his face, I wondered if he had me confused with someone else.

"Hi John," he said. "I'm Bob Woodward. (no kidding). Great job this morning on the soccer coach."

If I had been able to find my voice to say something other than, "t-t-t-t-thank you, it's g-g-g-g-great to meet you," I might have said, "yeah thanks. Nice job on Watergate."

Soccer coach, Watergate--about the same thing, right?

Anyway, covering soccer was great for me. The players were always cooperative and Steve Danzansky apologized for barking at me on the phone and we became good friends. I've always had a warm spot for the sport and whenever Steve Goff and I cover a basketball game together I ask him about D.C. United and about the MLS.

Here's the bottom line though: You can't FORCE people to like soccer just by telling them they should like it. You can't sit back and hope the U.S. gets the World Cup again in 2018 or 2022. And you can't have your best players playing overseas all the time. Imagine if the best college basketball players all played in Europe. What would that do for the NBA--and basketball is OUR sport, it isn't a game in which we are learning as we go.

So if people like my friend George Vecsey, who has written so enthusiastically on soccer in The New York Times for so many years, really want to see the game grow here--and I don't mean grow to NFL or NBA or Major League Baseball levels--they should focus on telling the people who run MLS that they MUST invest in keeping American stars at home. Freddy Adu bombed in Washington and Landon Donovan DOES play in L.A. There needs to be more effort to keep the top Americans home--PAY them to stay home.

Build the MLS rather than telling us we must watch the MLS. The same with The World Cup. The niche fans will want to watch England and Italy and The Ivory Coast. The mainstream fan wants to see the Americans compete. And they want to see the best Americans playing regularly on American soil in an American-based league.

So, let's look forward to the World Cup and let's see how this U.S. team does. But as we do so remember this: back in the days when I covered the Dips and the NASL the league's motto was this: "Soccer, the sport of the 80s." That was thirty years ago. We're still waiting for the revolution to take place.

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Answers to a couple of questions from recent days: My name is pronounced Feinsteen--since my family was from the Ukraine it is not pronounced Feinstine, which is usually the way it is pronounced for those with a Germanic background...I have NO intention of attempting the Bay Swim, I will leave that to my much braver swimming friends. I get nervous DRIVING the 4.4 miles across that bridge much less swimming under it...And to the poster from yesterday who referred to the "shoddy reporting," of the Detroit Free Press, two points: That reporting led to the Michigan investigation which MICHIGAN now says uncovered rules violations and in the blog yesterday most of my references were to the Michigan report--not to the Free Press...


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John's new book: "Moment of Glory--The Year Underdogs Ruled The Majors,"--is now available online and in bookstores nationwide. Visit your favorite retailer, or click here for online purchases

To listen to 'The Bob and Tom Show' interview about 'Moment of Glory', please click the play button below:

Yesterday I joined The Sports Reporters' Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin in the normal timeslot (5:25 ET on Wednesday's). Click the permalink, then the link below, to listen to the segment that takes a look at the Ben Roethlisberger suspension along with college basketball topics including Kyle Singler returning to Duke and the potential CBS/Turner bid for the NCAA tournament.

Click here to listen to the segment: The Sports Reporters

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And once again on Thursday, I joined Tony Kornheiser's newest The Tony Kornheiser Show in my normal slot at 11:05 am ET Thursday morning.  This week the topics included Bob Woodward, the World Cup, Tiger Woods and college basketball.

Click here to listen to the segment (starts within the 1st minute): Tony Kornheiser Show

This snow thing is now officially out of control. As I sit here the conditions outside my window are pretty close to a white-out. The snow is falling hard and fast and the wind is blowing it all over the place. How long the power holds out is anybody’s guess. Yesterday, when I tried to run errands, I had the sense that people were preparing for the Apocalypse. (the snow-palypse?)

Parking was close to impossible since there weren’t that many spaces to begin with because of piled up snow from the weekend and the whole world was out trying to get any supplies available. What was interesting was that no one was fighting over spaces or over food or even over batteries. It was as if a calm had come over everyone, a quiet acceptance that the next few days (at least) were going to be miserable and all anyone could do was hope for the best.

I’ve lived in Washington for more than 30 years and I’ve never seen anything even close to this. If you live in Buffalo you may have a sense of what this is like (except that snow belt places are far better prepared to deal with this sort of weather than we are) but otherwise you can’t imagine it. I certainly couldn’t.

Last weekend I escaped the first storm by leaving town Friday afternoon to drive to West Point so I could do the Army-Colgate game on TV on Sunday. That turned out to be a wise decision. There wasn’t a drop of snow up there and I saw a bunch of my Army friends and stayed in the Thayer Hotel where there was plenty of heat, plenty of food and no snow to be found. My trip home was a breeze—until I hit Baltimore.

Only then did I have a real sense of what had happened. The interstate was closed because abandoned cars (there had been a trailer-truck accident in the middle of the storm Saturday) were still being removed. I zigged over to The Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which was down to one, snow and ice-covered lane. The rest of the trip home was a nightmare.

We’re being told it will snow all day today. Given that travel was still very difficult yesterday three days after the weekend storm had ended, I can’t see the area being close to dug out before the weekend. It will, of course, be much more difficult this time because there is already so much snow piled up from plowing.

I would have loved to have gone to the VCU-George Mason game last night, which turned out to be a great game—Mason coming from 15 points down to win in overtime. I would have gone to tonight’s Virginia-Maryland game except there is no Virginia-Maryland game because it was postponed by the snow. Now, among other issues, I have to figure out a column for Sunday’s Post since one of those two games would have supplied me with a column of some kind. I’m supposed to do Bucknell-American on TV tomorrow night. Normally, AU is a 15-minute drive from here. I have no idea if the game will be played or, if it is played, if I’ll be able to get out of my driveway, off my street and to the campus. I just have no idea.

Back in 1985, the first time I covered The British Open, Bob Woodward dropped me a note when I got home. I still have it someplace. (I’ve kept any and all notes I’ve ever received from people I admire and Bob is at the top of the list). The note said something like this: “Great job on the British Open. Best thing you did all week was make people understand what the weather was like and how it affected everyone. You can never write too much about the weather: it affects us all and we can’t control it.”

Just as when Woodward told me a few years earlier that the key to any investigative story and most stories of any kind was, “getting the documents,” I remembered what he said. In fact, a year later, when I wrote ‘A Season on the Brink,” I almost always described the weather on a given day. If you go back and look, the first sentence of the book describes the weather.

Jeff Neuman, the editor who (after five rejections from other publishers) who bought my proposal for the book for McMillan and Company, kept trying to get me to take out all the weather references. “People don’t need to know what the weather was every single day you were there,” he said.

“Yes they do,” I said. “Bob Woodward says they do.”

To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of snow.

I know people romanticize it all the time, “winter wonderlands et al,” and if you watch movies like, “White Christmas,” you’d think there’s nothing better than snow. I just don’t see it that way. It may look pretty on TV and, I’m like everyone else, I remember sledding as a kid (In Riverside Park, right near the 79th street boat basin there was a great hill) and loving it. Now, snow is a nuisance at best and frightening at worst.

I don’t mind cold. The two mornings I was at West Point I happily got up in the morning and walked around the post for an hour in temperatures that never got much above 20 degrees. That’s fine. I also know there are people who will say, ‘hey, what’s wrong with a couple of days at home, sitting in front of a fire, taking it easy.

When I hear stuff like that I think of something Gary Williams said to me a few years ago. Maryland had ended its season with an embarrassing first round loss in the NIT at home against Manhattan. I called Gary that night just to see how he was doing. The next day he called me back.

“Hey, sorry I just got your message,” he said. “I drove right to my beach house (in Delaware) after the game to get away.”

“Good idea,” I said. “A few days just walking on the beach will do you some good.”

“John,” he said. “There are only so many days you can walk on the damn beach before you lose your mind.”

He’d been there 24 hours.

To be honest, I’m the same way. Sitting at home in front of a fire at night watching the Islanders (they finally won a game last night!) is fine. But one night in a row—maybe two—is enough for me. There are games to go to, work to be done, places to go.

I won’t be going anyplace for the next couple of days. No games, no work, nothing. I can’t stand it. And I still need a Sunday column.