America wakes up to World Cup, then falls asleep

There’s no doubt in my mind. This World Cup has unquestionably been the most boring in living memory. Maybe it’s the altitude or perhaps those fucking stupid vuvuzelas have got into their heads but for some reason the players have forgotten that the idea of football is to put that spherical thing they kick around, when they’re not kicking each other around that is, into those big nets at either end of the pitch. It’s the worst advert for the game I’ve ever seen – and I’m an unashamed fan. Well, perhaps not so unashamed at the moment.

Bizarrely, despite the bore-draws and the many detractors, whom you can’t blame for dissing the beautiful game when it is played as negatively as this, the Yanks are actually lapping up the tournmanet. Last Saturday’s England v USA match was the fifth most-watched soccer game involving the US in history, reportedly drawing nearly 13 million viewers (and those figures don’t include Spanish-language Univision’s figures), and the most watched first round World Cup game in US history. Not bad considering the time difference means that across the pond most of the matches are televised in the morning.

That said, I can only imagine that the US equivalent of Jeremy Kyle or Cash In The Attic means that the televisual competition at that time of day isn’t exactly breathtaking – and once the students, housewives and freelancers ‘working from home’ tuned in, most of them probably fell asleep. Read more.