are always more exciting for me. Being American actually promotes this feeling, imo, as ethnic pride is strong here, and local teams mean less (MLS is fine and all, but the tradition isn’t as ingrained as of yet). My wife, who is Danish, only watches football (well, sports at all) if it is the national team. Of course, we’re (the Danes) aren’t in the European Championship, so it is my ethnic mix (Italian, German) or regional loyalty (Sweden) that rules the day here.

I was born here in the states, but both of my parents were born in Mexico. I grew up watching the Mexican League and rooting for the Chivas.

I never really got into American national soccer (mostly b/c it’s a joke, IMO), and I always watched the Mexican national team.

Just sitting on the couch with your whole family (about 50 in all lol), seeing everyone’s range of emotions (from happiness to nervousness, to sadness, to anger and back to happiness) and just having a good time, I couldn’t picture anything better. And that’s something that translates in every language, in every country.

Unless you’ve always been a hardcore fan of American soccer, you probably prefer some club team or national team from elsewhere. The game in America isn’t world-class (yet!), so until it gets there, you keep an eye on soccer in the states (I’m in LA, so I vaguely follow the Galaxy). So for me, rooting for the USA or Sweden (half of my heritage) is far more enjoyable because the quality of the game is better than watching MLS.

I’m going to be a little different and say personally I follow my club a lot more. For this comes a lot from a lack of national identity when I was growing up. I grew up in a Colombian family, and thoroughly enjoyed watching those games. I remember staying up late to watch the ill-fated USA 94 matches. But due to a lack of coverage over here I’ve not been able to keep up with the national team.

However, having grown up in England, I can’t bring myself to follow the English team. I think its a mixture of not being brought up that way and a natural temptation to rile against the constant media hype over here. I also had a bad experience watching the England v Colombia game at World Cup 98.

Point is, no matter how excited I got being at Craven Cottage for the recent Colombia v Ireland friendly, it can’t match being at Emirates Stadium and celebrating with my fellow fans, regardless of nationality. This comes from being born and growing up 15 minutes from Highbury…I guess in a way I follow the team but at a local not national level.

rambling over!

I get far more emotionally invested in watching Liverpool play than I do watching the USMNT.