Goodbye World Cup. Goodbye soccer.

While I’ll continue to watch an occasional English Premier League Game and I’ll still play the FIFA Soccer ’10 video game with my roommate rather than work on homework, the rest of America will not.

The next time most Americans will even pretend to care about soccer will be when the 2014 World Cup kicks off in Brazil.

And it’s a shame.

Yes, this World Cup perpetuated some of the stereotypes that soccer is a low-scoring, boring sport. Spain, the new World Champion, won all four of its knockout stage games 1-0.

But, we have to look beyond the score of the games and truly embrace soccer for what it brings to the table.

Unlike baseball, football or basketball, soccer provides us a welcomed break from superstar mania that detracts from the sports itself.

As the ultimate team sport, soccer rarely gives an individual all the glory and if that does happen it’s something that has been earned.

In basketball, football and baseball, the multitude of stoppages and downtime allows athletes (who I won’t be naming in this column) to turn sport into an unneeded spectacle.

Soccer, on the other hand, is constant action for a full 90 minutes, and the focus is only on one thing — the game itself. And when a player does get the spotlight, it’s been earned, usually through a goal celebration.

Soccer, especially during the World Cup, connects people.

Whether it was because the United States tied England thanks to an error, or Landon Donovan’s thrilling game-winner against Algeria, you can’t argue against the fact that the pride on display during the World Cup is second to none.

Even when the United States was already eliminated, thousands of Spanish Americans were able to unite over the success of the new World Champions.

I understand I’m not your typical American sports fan — soccer is my second favorite sport and hockey comes in at number one — but the World Cup showed us how much potential soccer has to catch the eye of Americans.

So goodbye, World Cup. Thanks for the memories and hopefully by 2014 my fellow Americans will be ready to embrace the sport.