Despite a doubling of TV ratings for the first-round matches this month, before the US squad failed miserably, soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.

To put it in context, ABC-TV's average rating of 2.5 for the first eight matches it aired represents barely 8 million viewers in a nation of just under 300 million. Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, out of 1.1 billion worldwide.

By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl, the glitzy climax to the season for America's homegrown form of football. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, Hollywood's big night, in March and 36 million tuned in for last month's finale of "American Idol," a TV talent show.

And on ABC's sports cable network, ESPN, which presumably attracts more serious sports fans, the World Cup has had even fewer viewers, averaging around 1.75 million on channels that reach 91 million homes.

No surprise then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite market research service found only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.

"Despite an estimated combined $420 million invested in official partnerships by U.S.-based corporations to gain worldwide visibility, the facts don't lie: the U.S. lags significantly behind other countries when it comes to being passionate about 'the beautiful game' of soccer," GMI said.

The poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans did not even know that the 2006 World Cup was taking place in Germany.

Soccer just isn't part of the culture in a country that often prides itself on sporting isolationism.

Millions of kids may play the game in America. But unlike the spontaneity of soccer on Rio or Cape Town beaches, or in the alleys of Berlin and Bologna, you don't see kids kicking a ball around on the streets of Philadelphia or Memphis.

American opinion is still shaped by a handful of sports commentators who can barely hide their hostility. Yet, even as the U.S. team was competing in its fifth consecutive finals, two long-time opponents of soccer appeared to soften.

First, it was Frank Deford, a Sports Illustrated columnist, who delights in provoking soccer fans with outrageous jibes.

In a National Public Radio commentary, he actually praised the passion of the world's fans, and called soccer players "rock stars of sweat."

But the transformation was fleeting, as he still thinks soccer is not for Americans.

"America is one of the few countries that escaped being infected by the soccer pandemic," Deford went on. There is more interest this month in the professional basketball and hockey playoffs in America, "the only country where soccer is not important," he said.

Another apparent convert was Jack Kemp, the former NFL quarterback and Republican presidential candidate, who once called soccer "socialistic and collectivist" during a speech in Congress.

Yet he acknowledged in a posting on his Web site this week that seven or eight of his 16 grandchildren play soccer.

"Watching our USA soccer team tie the Italian team last week and on Sunday watching the athleticism of the Brazilian team, I'm hereby publicly acknowledging that soccer can be interesting to watch," said Kemp.

Unfortunately, he couldn't resist a late hit.

"I love soccer, but it's still boring," he added.

If a nation's newspapers reflect its thinking, then USA Today has America's attitude to soccer nailed down.

"That Americans have a love-hate relationship with soccer is indisputable," columnist William Mattox Jr. wrote last week. "We love to play the game, or at least to have our children play it. But we hate to watch it.

The newspaper ran letters echoing his comments.

"If America hadn't been founded by the pilgrims leaving ... to seek freedom of religion, a few hundred years later America would have been founded by the pilgrims seeking freedom from soccer," wrote Rollie Robinson of Portland, Oregon.