 If you bring together young people from Africa, Europe, Latin America and Asia, most of their shared narratives, the things they have in common, will be American culture. Movies, TV, music, video games, language even. The only exception to our control over global culture is sport. Soccer, and especially the World Cup, is the one form of global pop culture that is not a U.S. export. That said, even if we're not in the driver's seat, the United States is getting far more into the world's game than it used to be. As this picture of fans at a recent U.S. match makes clear, in the last World Cup in 2010, 9 million more U.S. viewers watched the Spain-Netherlands final on TV than watched the last game of the World Series that year. None of this means we're going to start measuring in Celsius or meters anytime soon, but there has to be some lasting consequence to all these American kids out there wearing Barcelona and Bayern Munich jerseys. We've always compensated for our isolationism by referring to our domestic champions and our sports as, quote, world champions. But now soccer is beginning to offer American sports fans the reality of global, not just national connectivity.