Klinsmann, a steely sort who won a Cup playing for Germany in 1990 and now lives much of the time in laid-back California, responded coolly.

"If we talk only about the quarterfinals or the semifinals, people will get it into their heads that all is well even if we get no further than that," he said. "It's important to always be hungry for more."

Football has never lacked for motivated players.

Once described as "rude turbulence" and played at varying times down alleys, over roads and across the countryside by teams ranging from a dozen soldiers to entire villages, the game's quadrennial championship has evolved into sports' grandest global spectacle.

It was codified in England in 1863 and carried to the far corners of the world on the wings of an empire, taking hold almost everywhere but the United States. There, a few dozen student-athletes from a handful of Eastern universities quickly grew impatient with the lack of scoring and devised a game of their own.

Despite England's proselytizing abroad, nowhere was more attention lavished on the game than at home, It became a different kind of opium for the industrialized masses. Laborers spent their week in the drudgery of the mines and mills; on Saturday, they left work at noon and went straight to the pub, then to the match.

For all its early glories, the game's stature grew as word of the "Christmas truce" of 1915 spread. During World War I, near a snowy village in France, a British mortar battalion huddled in its trenches 100 yards from German lines. A year earlier, British and German troops had agreed to a brief cease-fire, ending when commanders on both sides cut the fraternization short. This Christmas Eve, the two sides exchanged carols, then shouts of "Hello Tommy, Hello Fritz," and finally, they met and swapped cigarettes.

"Somehow a ball was produced," Bertie Felstead, the last known member of the British battalion recalled a few years ago. "I remember scrambling around in the snow. There could have been 50 on each side. No one was keeping score."

That changed 50 years later when England, no longer an empire nor even the undisputed master of its game, prepared to play Germany in the 1966 Cup final on home soil.

"West Germany may beat us at our national sport today, but that would be only fair," columnist Vincent Mulchrone wrote in The Daily Mail that morning. "We beat them twice at theirs."

To be fair, football has caused at least as many conflicts as it halted, however briefly.

In 1967, both sides in Nigeria's civil war agreed to a a 48-hour cease-fire so that Pele, the Brazilian forward considered the most magical player ever, could show off his skills in an exhibition match. Last October, after Ivory Coast clinched a trip to Germany, President Laurent Gbagbo acceded to the entreaties of his football federation and restarted peace talks in a country riven by conflict since 1999.

On the other hand, a series of disputes between El Salvador and Honduras boiled over in 1969 when their national teams met to begin a three-game World Cup qualification series. A riot during the second game ruptured diplomatic relations and was followed two weeks later by the 100-hour "Soccer War" that claimed 2,000 lives.

It has been said there is no greater drama in sports than watching a team trying to validate its national character in a World Cup. That is as true today as it was in the game's formative years.

More than a half-century ago, Uruguay, the original South American power, upset Brazil, the emerging one, and eight Uruguayans were said to have dropped dead from heart attacks as the country erupted in celebration.

That depth of emotion, like the game itself, still seems hopelessly foreign to most Americans. But all it requires is a paradigm shift.

"Soccer was not meant to be enjoyed," Gopnik wrote. "It was meant to be experienced."