Once inside, I was delighted to find the concession stands offering delicious Carlsberg lager. With every available pore I absorbed the brilliant atmosphere, knowing that nothing in America's vast sportscape can match it. (Chicago's Wrigley Field comes to mind, but the abundance of the baseball schedule mutes the Northside fanfare a bit.) For an American sportswriter abroad, the year was starting with an epiphany as I stood among an English football crowd with the smell of Bovril seeping out of the floorboards. The last match I had been to was a European Champions' League match at Chelsea's massive Stamford Bridge nearby. By comparison, the Cottage made it seem like a EuroDisney outland. In Chelsea's official "Shed Bar", I bought a lager and the Australian bartender seized the opportunity to pass useless Irish pound notes to this unknowing American. During Fulham's pre-game exercises, I took in the heartwarming sight of English children in the front row and the aisles wearing Fulham replica shirts bearing "Dempsey" on the back. This helped me begin a slow abandonment of my keep-a-low-profile-you're-American posture. Who cares about the crass American fatcats buying up Premier League teams, or the bumbling of George W. Bush or that our embassy in Grosvenor Square resembles a county prison in West Virginia? Clint Dempsey has taken to the field!

For several seasons in the US, I'd watched Dempsey toiling for the New England Revolution in Major League Soccer. It is a circus league plagued by terrible stadiums, teams with Euro-mockery names such as Real Salt Lake and dodgy ownership groups. The few European sportswriters who occasionally acknowledge the league seem to have a misguided notion that MLS "hasn't caught on" because of the low standard of play. No, MLS suffers because it fails to register on the overcrowded summer menu of US sport. However, the whole experience is elevated when Posh Beckham decides she wants to do some shopping in Los Angeles, so her husband David decides to accompany her and wear the colours of LA Galaxy for a brief stint on the MLS injured list.