George Carlin used to joke that soccer isn’t even a real sport because there are dots on the ball.

The world’s most popular sport draws little attention in the United States, lagging behind football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and auto racing in popularity.

Not that soccer doesn’t have a following here. Major League Soccer, which is in its 11th season, is a 12-team league with each team playing a 32-game schedule between April and October. Playoffs start in October and end with the MLS Cup, which this year will take place in Frisco, Texas on Nov. 12.

“MLS is getting a lot better,” says Craig Hutcheson, who’s played, coached and written about soccer for various publications and Web sites. “It’s nowhere near the top divisions in England, Spain, Italy or Germany … But the standards get better every year and there’s a noticeable increase in the standard of the play each year.”

Unlike the 1970s-era North American Soccer League, MLS seems more focused on promoting the game of soccer itself, while NASL specialized in featuring huge soccer stars from all around the world, often when they were well past their prime, purely for entertainment value.

“I think the model for MLS is better because they’ve cultivated the American talent and given guys who come out of college a place to play,” Hutcheson says.

When it comes to soccer, though, international play is where the real action is. The World Cup, the sport’s biggest tournament, takes place every four years. This year, Germany is hosting the event, which began on June 6 with games taking place in 12 different cities throughout the country.

“The World Cup’s the biggest tournament there is,” Hutcheson said. “It’s the one players want to play in more than any other. Players get very little compensation from their national teams; they make their money from the league teams and sponsorships. So the World Cup is a national pride thing.”

The format for the tournament features eight groups comprised of four teams each. The United States is grouped with Italy, Ghana and the Czech Republic. For the first round, each team plays the other teams in its group once. After the first round, the top two teams from each group will advance to the second round where play becomes single elimination, meaning if you lose, you’re out. Then it’s quarterfinals, semifinals, and a third-place playoff leading up to the championship game on July 9.

Early in the spring, the United States was ranked fifth in FIFA’s rankings, but Hutcheson says those rankings don’t always reflect which teams are the best, largely because unlike polls of college sports in the United States, strength of schedule isn’t a factor in determining rankings. So although the United States is ranked well ahead of Italy in FIFA’s poll, the Italians are heavily favored to come out of Group E, while the U.S. team would do well to advance to the second round.

Soccer to Me!
In some ways the World Cup is a lot like the Olympics. Every four years, the sport gets lots of media play. Thanks to the Internet and cable television, you can get up to speed on the game’s best teams and players from all over the world, something that could come in handy while you travel the globe.

The Fox Soccer Channel and Gol TV are two cable and satellite channels devoted to covering soccer from all angles. Both feature games from all over the world, highlights, news shows and features on players and teams. Of course, the Internet has a wealth of Web sites devoted to the game. The official Web site for the U.S. Soccer team (www.ussoccer.com) features news, schedules, clips and links to purchase tickets to the team’s games. The World Cup has its own Web site (www.fifaworldcup.yahoo.com) featuring information on the latest developments affecting the tournament. Fox Soccer Channel’s site (msn.foxsports.com/fs w) is packed with news, schedules and video clips of highlights and interviews. The offical Web site for Major League Soccer (www.mlsnet.com) has all the latest news on the league, as well as links to every MLS team.