Following the USA’s loss to Ghana in the World Cup’s round of 16 on Saturday, now seems like as good of time as any to inform everyone of what I’ve learned about the global game.

• Criticize a coach, and all is lost: Take France and England as examples. The French players basically had a mutiny, and they didn’t even advance out of pool play. John Terry of England criticized his coach recently, and they got embarrassed today by Germany in an elimination game. It’s just not like that in the States. Heck, the 1985 Chicago Bears had coaches that hated each other, and they just kept winning. Sports teams over here just don’t need to get along. In soccer, they must.
• When a player falls victim to a hard foul in a blowout, there’s much less pain. You know what I’m talking about. In a one-goal game, if a player collapses after being tapped on the shoulder, that player will roll around on the ground for a minute or so. In a blowout game like some of the ones we’ve seen earlier in the tournament, those players get back up right away. Amazing, isn’t it?
• Unless I missed it, there wasn’t any rioting after the Americans’ loss on Saturday. No torched cars. No looting. No National Guard. Where’s your soccer spirit? If you need any proof at all that soccer will never be as big here as it is overseas, that proof can be found in the lack of rioting. And it’s safe to say that’s a good thing.
• Apparently, as some sort of sign of sportsmanship, players from opposing teams exchange jerseys after games. Nothing promotes camaraderie like slipping into another man’s sweaty uniform. Yuck! If it was me playing, I’d say, "Thanks, but not thanks."

Goodbye, soccer. See you in four years.

That’s the way that I and many other sports fans feel now that the United States has been eliminated from the World Cup. The USA lost to Ghana 2-1 in extra time Saturday.

Sure, I’ll probably keep an eye on the rest of the games, but I won’t watch as intensely as I would have if the U.S. was still going.

This is the challenge that soccer faces in this country. For Americans to care, the U.S. must be great.

But the biggest challenge in my opinion is that Americans are used to seeing the best athletes all of the time. Major League Baseball. National Football League. The NBA. The NHL. The best athletes money can buy play in those leagues.

Major League Soccer is a solid product. To be honest with you, I never thought it would have lasted this long, but it has. But those players aren’t the best the world produces. They’re good players. But the MLS isn’t the English Premier League. Real Salt Lake shouldn’t be confused with Real Madrid.

And that’s not something that’s going to change. It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario, and Europeans just care more about soccer and spend a lot more on it than we do. So unless Mark Cuban decides to go hog-wild and invest his own money to buy the best and hope he breaks even, it’s just not going to happen.

I really do enjoy watching the World Cup. But for me, it’s like the Olympics. You get jacked up every four years, and that’s how it will remain.

Mistakes get made. And officials are not exempt from those mistakes.

But a day after the USA had a go-ahead goal disallowed in its World Cup match against Slovenia, does anyone really know what the call was by referee Koman Coulibaly?

The U.S. had to settle for a 2-2 tie Friday, which was a solid results considering the 2-0 halftime deficit.

The frustrating part for me is that I just can’t seem to figure out what the call was, and I haven’t seen anything about it. I know there was some physical play in the box, but who was the culprit?

Looks like that referee might have officiated his last game of this World Cup.

All I know is when MLB umpire Jim Joyce made a bad call to ruin the perfect game attempt by Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga, Joyce couldn’t have handled it better. He manned up. He faced the music. He admitted he made a mistake, and people forgave him for it.

I just haven’t seen this ref do the same. Maybe FIFA doesn’t permit refs to discuss calls. But it seems even the players and coaches involved can’t seem to figure out what the call was.