La Furia Roja, Spain's national team, celebrate winning the 2010 World Cup.
It's the height of summer. Your friends are suddenly and oddly soccer-obsessed. Also strangely nationalistic, often for countries in which they were not born. You tag along to escape the heat and for lack of anything better to do. You see the World Cup, and it's thrilling. Drama, skill, passion, heartbreak, triumph. It's awesome. You love it, and you need more. But those easy-to-recognize national teams only play every couple of years. In between there's a confusing mess of domestic leagues, cup competitions, continental championships, one-off trophy games, and international qualifiers. It is daunting. I remember being intimidated when I first started watching, but luckily for you I am no longer that callow, uninitiated youth.
