football: the political argument

Apparently even a soccer match, even an important one, cannot occur without the attendant political commentary from the right and the left. Gary Schmidt's argument that Americans don't follow football seems superious at best. I know he's streching for that old canard that because the socialist nations in Europe and Latin America play soccer, Americans need to abhor the sport, but his point about football not being democratic because it allows dogged teams to prevent other, presumably better teams from scoring is just plain odd. I'll admit the USA didn't attack anywhere near as much as Spain did, but they just plain out defended them.