The Weak Ender

Maybe we should give this soccer thing a chance. The woman above is Daniella Cicarelli, famous ex of Brazilian star Ronaldo�the most well-known soccer player outside of that Spice Girl�s husband. But don�t cry for Ronaldo who is now courting renowned super model Raicia Oliveira.

So maybe there is something to this whole soccer thing after all. FOX Sports has a photo gallery of soccer wives and girlfriends you can catch here. Some of these girls are your typical Euro trash. The kind with heroin-sculpted bodies you see outside of clubs in Newport Beach bumming cigarettes and asking, �Dooo you have a vite?� But a number of them are hot. Really hot. So hot they make Anna Benson look like a media-whoring former stripper. And you have to give soccer credit there. Baseball players date former strippers, soccer players are dating current ones.

• The news is not all good on the soccer front. Oliveira publicly announced this week that she will not be posing nude. Listen, if you ever want soccer to become big in this country maybe Raicia should rethink her position.

• Email of the week from James in SRC: Hip-hop artist always pour out part of their beer for fallen colleagues. So in retrospect do you think umpires were spilling quarts of ranch dressing for Eric Gregg? What is wider, Gregg�s casket or the strike zone he gave Livan Hernandez in Game 7 vs. Cleveland? That was uncalled for. What's the matter with you people?

• The women�s College World Series had higher ratings than Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Fitting.

• Anybody catch the opening of the Omen remake on June 6? That little kid looks really creepy. You figure when he grows up he is going to look like this.

AND FINALLY
Soccer fans�outside of the sports editor of the OCR�are some of the most defensive people on Earth. Like they are literally offended if you don�t like the sport. Sorry. Just don�t see it taking off here. If it didn�t happen after the World Cup in 1994, it ain�t happening. (Altough the pictures of Ronaldo's girl friend don't hurt.)

People who bash soccer for its (lack of) scoring and intricacies are lame. If you awarded six points for every soccer goal, it wouldn�t seem so low scoring. As for boring, have you ever seen the Baltimore Ravens play? And if they can understand it in third world countries, it�s not as complicated as you think. The scoring isn�t a problem; the game isn�t hard to understand. It�s three things.

Offsides. Imagine Terrell Owens beating a cornerback in a one-on-one coverage, getting wide open and then having the safety stop running, letting the receiver get by him. Owens would then be called for offsides and the play would be nullified. The Packers tried that strategy to no avail last year.

No upsets. Everybody says the U.S. does not have a chance and odds are the team won�t make it out of its division. If this was the NFL, the top U.S. player would be injured. His replacement�a former backup in college and late-round pick�would lead the U.S. to the quarterfinals. Then the U.S. would apparently lose a playoff game on a controversial call�a call that would eventually be overturned by replay. The U.S. would then convert two corner kicks in the snow, win the game, and win the Super Cup!

That's a sport. And that said player would then have to fight off rumors he was gay proving that he has really arrived in America.

Nobody roots for the U.S. You have a bunch of Orange County-born, non-Spanish speaking dudes named Fernandez pulling for Mexico. Guys who have never even had pizza outside of Chicago pulling for Italy because their great-great-grand parents immigrated from there. It�s stupid. We are probably the biggest U.S.A. fans in the world. Not so much because of the sport. No, the quicker America dominates this sport, the quicker the world will participate in another sport for us to ignore. Like hockey, which at least had the good sense to go to OLN where it belongs, getting beaten in the ratings by women�s softball.