Steve Hamilton/The Falcon

News flash, Americans: to the rest of the world, soccer is a sport.

And not in the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) sense, where little kids chase after a ball, they get a plastic trophy at the end, and everyone is a winner. Soccer is a professional sport. A prestigious, professional sport.

A prestigious, professional sport that the rest of the world likes to call "futbol."

Now for those of you who have instantly conjured up an image of large men in safety gear running after a lemon-shaped ball, let me stop you right there.

This is not football. This is futbol. You thought the Super Bowl was big? Allow me to introduce you to a concept called the World Cup, a global competition held only once every four years to allow for a three-year qualification round.

The World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world. The last one, held in 2006, drew approximately 715.1 million people to watch the tournament final between Italy and France.

William Shankly, one of the greatest British futbol managers once said, "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death...it is much, much more important than that."

American foreign relations being what they are today (dismal, embarrassing, and generally lacking), and the American soccer team being what it is today (dismal, embarrassing, and generally lacking), the answer seems obvious.

American foreign relations would dramatically improve if we started taking futbol seriously.

Avery Matro is a sophomore double-majoring in english literature and classics

Now I know some readers will bristle at this thought, for reasons other than "soccer is so boring." Wouldn't we isolate ourselves more from other countries if we started beating them at their favorite sport?

To ease that fear, allow me just to say that in the last World Cup, the American team didn't win a single game. So while I love the enthusiasm that if Americans just wanted to, they could win a World Cup, it's highly unlikely.

Another objection to this "make goals, not war" approach might be, "Hey, if the other countries hate us so much, aren't we making them feel better by letting them beat us all the time?"

Yeah, nothing says "good game" like letting someone win at a sport that you don't know, don't watch and ultimately don't care about.

Americans are entering into a new century that has been dubbed by a USA Today article as the "Anti-American Century."

"If the past 100 years were widely considered the American Century, this new one is fast shaping up as the Anti-American Century," said the article. We are entering into an age where traveling abroad makes us wish for the first time that we were Canadian.

If Americans started to take the sport of the world, the global heartbeat, and the international currency of pride and honor seriously, three things would happen that would dramatically shift how the world sees us.

First, if international futbol became popular in the United States, Americans might learn where all the other countries in the world are.

A CNN article reported on a study that found "that 88 percent...could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia...In the Middle East, 63 percent could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map, and 75 percent could not point out Iran or Israel. Forty-four percent couldn't find any one of those four countries."

The study went on to say that "Americans scored second to last on overall geographic knowledge, trailing Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Sweden."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but knowing the location of Colombia, as our government prepares to enter into a free trade agreement with them, might be useful information as far as foreign relations go.

The second boost futbol would give to our failing foreign relations is that it would combat the image of "Americanization." The "Americanization" of the world is a phenomenon in which indigenous cultural practices are being replaced with American ones.

Why drink water when you have Coca-Cola? Why listen to your music when we have Michael Jackson? Why kick that skunk-looking ball when you can kick and throw this nifty, lemon-shaped thing?

Futbol is a sport without national allegiance. It's a game that can be found from the streets of Brazil to the fields of Britain. Instead of learning to say "hello" in 20 different languages, just learn how to kick a futbol, and that will be internationally understood.

Lastly, taking futbol seriously will teach humility. A consistently good national futbol team is going to take a lot of humility to build. Not only will we have no idea what we're doing, but everyone else will know what they're doing. In this time when America is viewed as the "big brother" of the world, it might help smooth things over if we had to ask for help for once.

Let's play some futbol!