World Cup 2010

American culture is filled with sporting events which have become major cultural events. These include the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Indy 500, Kentucky Derby, NCAA basketball tournament and many, many more.

To our closest cultural neighbors, the Canadians, there is nothing comparable to hockey and winning the Stanley Cup. An appreciation for what is known here in North America as 'soccer' has been slow in building at the professional level.

But elsewhere around the globe, from Europe to South America, Asia to Africa, Down Under and everywhere in between, no game is bigger than soccer, or what is actually known as 'football'  to the rest of that world.

Today begins the biggest event in the biggest sport drawing the most interest the world over as the World Cup gets under way. It has been estimated that approximately 715 million people the world over watched the 2006 finals in which Italy defeated France in a shootout for the title.

Held every four years, the World Cup is the championship of football. Competitions actually begin three years earlier, so for this 2010 championship the competition began in 2007.

The early competitions occur within geographic regions of the planet, as nations battle against their neighbors for the right to advance to higher levels in the tournament.

The World Cup tournament began officially in 1930 with Uruguay dumping South American rivals Argentina by a 4-2 score.

There have been 18 World Cup tournaments, as the competition was not held in either 1942 or 1946 due to the events surrounding World War II.

Toronto FC - 2, UNION - 1

After going almost two weeks between their first-ever match on the road in Seattle to their first-ever home match back in Philly, the Union took the pitch for the 2nd time in 5 days at Toronto.

The Toronto FC (football club) have one of the most rabid and supportive fan bases in all of MLS, and so for the 2nd time in their young history, the Union 11 were going to be in extremely hostile conditions on the road in front of almost 22,000 Toronto partisans.

The Union came out strong and confident, riding the high of their weekend home victory over D.C. United, and were generally dominating play against Toronto in the early going.

But the momentum and the ultimate outcome of the game all changed suddenly and dramatically. In the 34th minute, Union defender and team captain Danny Califf was handed a red card and tossed from the game for delivering what appeared to be an intentional elbow to the head of Toronto forward Julian de Guzman.

With Califf tossed from the game, the Union would be forced to play the rest of the match shorthanded by a man. That was bad enough, but also on the ensuing free kick Toronto's Dwayne De Rosario drilled a shot that overpowered Union goalie Chris Seitz, slipping through Seitz' hands and into the net for a 1-0 Toronto lead.

Things appeared pretty bleak for the Union at that point in the match being covered nationally on ESPN2. They were trailing 1-0 on the road in an extremely hostile arena and had to play shorthanded. But hope reared it's head again just before halftime.

UNION - 3, D.C. United - 2

Young Roger Torres has proven to be one of the most exciting players on the youngest team in Major League Soccer, and the 19-year old Philadelphia Union forward was a key player in setting up the first goal in franchise history. I was there, but thanks to Vice President Joe Biden, I didn't get to see it live.

My wife and I had purchased a pair of great tickets, just off mid-field on the west side of Lincoln Financial Field, in anticipation of seeing this Inaugural home match, the first for the new expansion Union in front of their home crowd in Philadelphia. Unfortunately for Deb, she got sick in the days leading up to the match, and was still sick on game day.

My eldest daughter, Christine, pinch-hit and accompanied me to the match, and we got to enjoy a nice dad-daughter evening at The Linc. Unfortunately it got off to a slow start. Even though we arrived more than a half hour before the scheduled kickoff and were able to quickly and luckily find a great parking slot despite the crush of fans, our progress into The Linc was halted at the front door, literally.

It turns out that U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden had been solicited by the club to kick-out the ceremonial 'first ball', and thus the security at the front gates was unbelievable. Every fan entering and ever bag they carried was searched and screened, making for a massive holdup at those gates. It took us about 40 minutes to get through the sea of humanity and make our way into The Linc.

As we began to trek around the concourse to our seats, we scanned the food and merchandise concessions, and just then heard the roar of the crowd inside. Torres had been awarded a 'corner kick', blasted the ball inside, and then taken a carom and quickly fed the ball to striker Sebastian LeToux who came streaking towards the goal and headed it home for that first-ever goal in Union history.