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Futbol!

That wild and wacky World Cup is in full swing. I have my personalized Whizzer soccer jersey, I have my soccer ball–excuse me, futbol–and thanks to a few German lagers, I have some idea what’s going on.

I know we Americans aren’t used to getting booed by foreigners, so let me prepare you. It can get dicey with this bunch.

Take the Portuguese for example. I think we all learned from Charles Barkley not to mess with the Angolans, but here goes Portugal, playing a chippy game against the huge underdogs in Group D. What’s more, Portugal made Angola a colony back in the day. You just don’t forget that kind of stuff.

Anyhoo, the Portuguese won the game, but fans in Germany booed them for their sloppy play.

If that doesn’t have the U.S. written all over it in red, white and blue, I don’t know what does!

Our boys will be playing the Czech Republic on Monday (they used to be called Czechoslovakia, but must have split with Slovakia for the kids’ sake).

We hear this team is tough. Not as tough as pronouncing “Gelsenkirchen,” where this game will take place. The only thing worse than the Americans’ Group E draw? The cities where they’ll play.

Take Kaiserslautern, where we’ll play Italy. Sounds like where Kaiser Wilhelm II was “exiled”–hint, hint–after Germany lost World War I. (And lookie here, I couldn’t even make it past the first weekend without bringing up the whole World War bugaboo. Bygones, people!)

Now me personally, I think this whole World Cup is just a tournament of tune-ups for the Brazilians–and the hooligans’ idea of Mecca. But we Americans are a hopeful bunch.

So here’s a breakdown of how the Americans’ first matchup shapes up.