Everyone's an expert!

After 9/11 it seemed like everyone became an expert on Islam. This may sound strange, but there seems to be a similar dynamic at work recently with the World Cup.

Everybody seems to be commenting on it, even ignoramuses who obviously know nothing about the game, except the fact that we should care about it once every four years.

For example, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote an article last week following the US victory over Portugal. Gems o' wisdom flowed:

...yesterday was a great day for America. By beating the highly skilled team from Portugal in the first round of the World Cup and doing so with three of its best players injured and unable to play, the United States established itself as a rising soccer power in the world, probably the rising power.

Please. The US is rising as a footballing country, but the countries that have made the greatest strides recently are in Africa and Asia.

I suspect not many Americans awoke at 5 a.m. EDT to watch the game live. Yes, more should have, if only for patriotic reasons.

Did you rise early, Fred? Why do I get the feeling that you didn't even fulfill your "patriotic" duty and yet are lightly scolding other red-blooded Americans for not doing so?

The important question now is how did the Americans get so good? The playmaker, Claudio Reyna, was out with an injury, as was the most explosive scorer, Clint Mathis, plus their most exciting midfielder, Chris Armas. Yet they weren't missed. Okay, maybe Reyna was missed in the second half when the U.S. team had trouble controlling the ball at times.

Armas is a workhorse; a pretty good one at that. But he is probably the most un-exciting midfielder on the short-list for the national team.

[Bruce Arena] may be the best soccer coach in the world. He's been a winner everywhere: four NCAA titles in a row at the University of Virginia and I don't know how many titles in Major League Soccer here. He has the knack for bringing out the best in players. In the first half against Portugal, he had Americans playing more dazzlingly well than they ever had. Arena brought out better than the best. It's hard to imagine any team in the World Cup, even Germany or Brazil or Italy, playing a better half.

More hyperbole. Sure, Arena is a quality coach and probably the best person for the job in the US (outside of Bob Bradley, perhaps), but he's not considered the "best soccer coach in the world" by anyone credible.

Yes, I'm being extraordinarily harsh here and this article is probably not worth getting into a fuss about. But it still galls me that we have people jumping on a bandwagon who obviously know little to nothing about the sport. Especially someone so close to my heart, like Fred Barnes. :)

I don't claim a commentary monopoly on the sport, by any means, but if political magazines are going to chime in on football, at least enlist somebody who a) follows the game regularly and b) obviously isn't just reciting the material he picked off of CNNSI or from the nightly Sportscenter broadcast.