The “Lexington” column in this week’s Economist features a now-standard riff about how curious and revealing it is that America eschews the world’s pastime. The twist: The world resents the hell out of us for this.

But would “the world” really be happier if America took this game seriously and, as a consequence, cut through their footballers like a hot knife through butter? I doubt it. The only way to make “the world” happy would be if we cared a lot about soccer and lost a lot at soccer. Anything else would simply feed the insatiable anti-America hate machine.