Top 10 World Cup Conversational Fakes

According to the numbers, young people aren't very much into travel. Being connected to the Web is all; once you can have distant friends, getting on a plane for monster expense just doesn't have the same magic. But there's still some appeal to having something in common with the rest of the world, and a tolerance for this game, or at least a month of it every four years, seems like a fairly small price to pay.

Besides, the NBA Finals will be over in a week or less, the NFL season starts late this year, and Stephen Strasburg only works once every five games, and won't be on for more than 90 pitches when he does work. So take the month and consider it time well killed.

So... do you want to appear like you know what you are talking about with the upcoming FIFA World Cup, but can't be bothered to actually follow a sport that most Americans stop caring about after puberty? Well, you are in luck. Use these small conversational tidbits, and you'll be sure to bore casual fans enough to prove your bona fides, and infuriate actual fans enough to make them leave you alone.

10) "France is a real mess this year." In that the head butting guy isn't on the team anymore, the coach is kind of nuts, and well, they are French. Which means no one is really rooting for them, including the French, and you can start with earnest sounding jibes about their defense, and eventually raise it up to full-on racism. Enjoy!

9) "I'm worried about the Argentines." With reason, really. The Group B pairings look fairly easy, they always have incredibly talented players, and if they win, coach and noted cocaine achiever Diego Maradona has pledged to run naked in the streets. So there's a lot to worry about, really.

8) "Group A is primed for an upset." You've got the home team South Africans, the always dangerous Mexicans, the experienced French and the wild card Uruguayans. Realistically, it's Mexico in a walk, but it's possible that the home team makes a run, really.

7) "I like Group D for an upset." The Germans are an auto-pass, but the Serbs, Aussies and Ghanas (Ghanese?) aren't exactly household names. Personally, I'm hoping for the Ghanans, because there should definitely be multiple African teams going deep in this thing.

6) "I love that New Zealand is in the draw." This will allow you to talk New Zealand, or at least, it will allow me to. I went there once. It was great. Certainly more interesting than a month-long soccer tournament. And for the record, I suspect the Kiwis will play the game like the Irish or English, but uglier.

5) "I love how every country seems to play the game a little differently." The World Cup is fun because you get to see wildly different styles face against each other; when a big white team plays a little brown one, it really doesn't look like the same game. Except when it comes to begging for calls from the refs. That's universal!

4) "You have to love how there are no commercial interruptions." This is actually true. If you tear your hair out over how the last two minutes of a basketball or football game takes freaking forever, this is the game for you. There's just something wonderful about sitting down to a game and knowing that, failing a ton of injuries or a long tie, that it's going to be over in under two hours.

3) "Something's got to be done about all of the flopping." That something would be to give yellow and red cards for flops. It would also take extraordinary stones from the refs, and a consistent three to six month period of them all doing that. So, um, it'll never happen. (But as a bonus aside, I kind of love the card system for refs, and would love to see more sports use it. It's just better theater.)

2) "Are you worried about security?" Let's see, we've got an economically disadvantaged country that's undergoing severe hardships and corruption right now. We've also got an inordinate amount of tourists with cash coming in for a month, and a few African teams in the tournament that have dangerously involved followers. Let's just say that the South African government isn't sleeping easy right now.

1) "US-UK will be a war." In that no one wants to hype a blowout, really. The US is peskier than usual, with some good recent outings. The Brits, of course, take the sport more seriously than dental hygiene or the proper refrigeration of alcohol, and have an ungainly collection of top-shelf talent. The real issue is that no matter what happens, the winning team's fans will be insufferable. Count on it. (And in a group where the other teams are Algeria and Slovenia, both should go through anyway.