BOB GARFIELD: A cumulative audience of more than 32 billion is expected at some point to watch the World Cup, and the astounding popularity of these games is changing global politics – at least until the July ninth finals. North Koreans are watching South Koreans for the first time, strengthening their common identity. Israelis and Palestinians rose up as one to protest the high cost of the telecasts. And we Americans? Apparently, most of us are left cold by the World Cup, despite the strenuous, if occasionally tone-deaf, efforts of our sports media. Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic and author of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, says the way games are covered speaks volumes about each nation's particular obsessions.

FRANKLIN FOER: In England, there's still, I think, this kind of residual sense of imperialism, actually, in the coverage, or, rather, of imperial greatness. There's this expectation that England, no matter the players that they're actually fielding on the team, are going to achieve great success in a tournament. And so the press invests all this effort into hyping the English team and their successes. If you look at the Italian press, there's this incredible focus on refereeing, and there's this kind of vague sense of conspiracy, which is, I would argue, broadly reflective of lots of parts of Italian culture and society where historically authority has been incredibly diffuse, and these sorts of conspiracies have actually been quite real, given the influence of the Mafia in the country.

BOB GARFIELD: And, by the way, the succession of refereeing scandals in Italy and throughout Europe, I mean, it's not utter paranoia.

FRANKLIN FOER: One of my favorite television shows around the world is a show called "Il Processo" in Italy, which means "The Trial." And, literally, there's a panel of journalists, and inevitably one leggy woman with a dress with a slit up to her bellybutton who decide if the referee has been judicious in handing out punishment or failing to hand out punishment. And you have these clips of players falling to the ground or getting tripped that are played in super-slow motion over and over again, and are debated. And there's always this whiff of conspiracy within this discussion that somebody is paying off somebody to get these charges, that the referees can't possibly be acting in the best interest of the game. It is the single most delightful spectacle.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, I guess in some countries, the way the press covers soccer reflects not so much national values so much as the way the press operates. I'm thinking of Brazil, which has been sort of notoriously hands-off on the subject of corruption that has riven the sport.

FRANKLIN FOER: That's right. In Brazil, there was a congressional investigation, and what it uncovered was that there was this incredibly cozy relationship between the federation that runs Brazilian soccer and the press that covers it; that when the press went to the 1998 and '94 World Cups, their way was paid by the Brazilian Federation, and they were taken on these extravagant shopping trips, along with their wives. And the effect is that corruption in Brazilian soccer never really gets fully exposed. In fact, there's a term of art for the guys who run the Brazilian game who are corrupt. They're called "the cartolas," which means "the top hats." And everybody knows that the cartolas rule with a corrupt hand, yet there's been very little done ever to dislodge them. And I think that the main reason that there's been inaction is that the press has never really crusaded against them.

BOB GARFIELD: I just want to come back to the United States for a moment and talk about the games as they are being televised here, using as a color commentator not a European or Asian or South American soccer expert but, in fact, an American baseball announcer sort of specially trained for the duty.

FRANKLIN FOER: Among soccer fans, there's a broad sense that ESPN and the Disney Company must hate soccer because they field commentators who seem to know very little about the game, who don't announce the game using any of the conventions that the rest of the world uses. And a lot of people turn to the Spanish networks to watch the games, even if they don't speak Spanish themselves, merely to avoid the annoying commentary offered by the ESPN/ABC announcers.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Well, give me an example of something that's particularly irritating.

FRANKLIN FOER: Well, there are these clichés that they seize upon. They'll talk tirelessly about soccer's stopping a civil war in Ivory Coast. They'll repeat this ad nauseum. They speak in hyperbole about players and about the game, so that if there's a player, like Ronaldinho, who has an incredible reputation, they'll just say that he's fantastic over and over again without adding any sort of depth to that. Those are the superficial things. What really, I think, is irksome is that they insist on using baseball and basketball as a metaphor for making sense of the rules. They'll mis-describe goal kicks as penalty kicks. And then there's just kind of a broader lack of grasp of the English language that I think offends soccer fans, describing how the game is turned around 360 degrees when they mean 180 degrees.

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS]

FRANKLIN FOER: And maybe it's the snobbery of soccer fans that we are so irked and upset by all of this.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, Frank, thank you once again.

FRANKLIN FOER: Thanks so much, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Franklin Foer is author of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization. Meanwhile, Budweiser ads running in England take pleasure in the American soccer fan's pain.

BRAD LASCARBO: Hi. I'm Brad Lascarbo.

HAL BUTCHGRASS: And I'm Hal Butchgrass.

BRAD LASCARBO: We've come all the way from the U.S. of A. to the quaint town of Germany to bring you all the kicks, tackles and field goals of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, reality bites a public radio station in Spokane when Comedy Central comes to town.

BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media from NPR.