'I'd be quite happy if my daughter remains as indifferent to sports as her mother.'

The World Cup has had a major impact in the United States with at least two people, according to Helen Angove in her latest Email from America.

I am not a sports fan. Nothing is less likely to interest or inspire me than the sight of a bunch of people running around a field getting sweaty.

In the UK (for a woman at least) this is not much of a social disability - except possibly during Wimbledon, when, if you confess to not following the tournament, people tend to look at you as if you’ve just announced a burning interest in trainspotting.

Other than Wimbledon, though, it is possible to maintain complete ignorance about any UK sporting event or personality without even eliciting so much as a raised eyebrow.

In the US, on the other hand, even women who show no outward signs of being the least bit interested in any kind of sporting activity, nevertheless still seem to be able to sustain, at the drop of a hat, detailed and lengthy discussions about current sporting events, leaving me floundering in the shallows of a conversation to which I have no hope of contributing.

There is an entire subculture of jargon and symbolism that provides me with no point of reference. I was mystified one day when several babies at playgroup were all wearing matching red socks - until it was finally explained to me that the Boston Red Sox Baseball Team were playing an important game.

The sporting interests of America are very different to those of the UK. We get most worked up about international contests – the Olympics, the Ashes and of course the World Cup and Wimbledon.

US sporting interests, however, are more centred around internal competitions (despite the fact that the Major League baseball championship is known as the “World Series”, it involves only North America), of which, of course, the Super Bowl is paramount. (In fact, Super Bowl Sunday has become almost a de facto public holiday – shops that otherwise are only ever closed at Christmas and Thanksgiving may also be closed on the day of the big game.

And in terms of viewing figures it is the prime time of prime times for television advertising – the average cost of a single thirty-second TV slot during the game has reached $2.5 million, and the adverts will be specially commissioned for the occasion).

So the news (fresh off the press as I write this) that the United States has lost to Ghana in the World Cup, and is now out of the running, has been met with a complete absence of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I have come across one or two Americans who have admitted to watching World Cup coverage, but largely because it makes them feel cosmopolitan and “connected to the rest of the world” rather than through any interest in the sport itself.

In fact “soccer” here is largely a game for teenage girls, for whom it is a serious business. Belonging to a junior soccer team requires significant levels of commitment for the whole family, giving rise to the expression “soccer mom” – a stay-at-home parent whose life revolves around ferrying her children to sports practice and fixtures.

A friend of mine looked into getting her five year old daughter involved in soccer after the little girl expressed an interest – and backed out rapidly when she discovered the time commitment would effectively prevent any other family activities at the weekends.

For fathers, perhaps, the equivalent to being a soccer mom is to be involved in Little League Baseball – a non-profit organization that arranges local children’s leagues of baseball and softball. Despite its avowed goals of having fun and teaching teamwork, sportsmanship and fair play, Little League can be serious stuff.

The American cliché of Dad out in the yard with junior indulging in a little catching practice is being replaced with Dad who signs the cheques for junior’s professional personal coach.

It is not unknown for violence to break out during games - not involving the kids, but the parents. One coach apparently tried to throttle the umpire during a game for six year olds in Oklahoma.

And the pressure can be such that most Little League players drop out of the sport before they even reach puberty – making a mockery of any intention of encouraging children into healthy patterns of physical activity to stand them into good stead into adulthood.

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