The 2009 Major League Soccer “All-Star” game was played July 29. Heard around the country in sports bars everywhere was a collective ho-hum. Even the Major League Baseball All-Star game, which has been languishing in recent years, was more exciting. (Finally.)

As many soccer critics could have predicted, the game, which pitted the MLS All-Stars against the Premier League’s Everton FC, ended in a tie. The ever-exciting penalty kick shootout then occurred, which Everton won 4-3.

The score was reported as 4-3 in the 7/31 Washington Post, exacerbating the misunderstandings about the game. The score was 1-1; the shootout was 4-3 (of five penalty kicks per team). That displays a fundamental confusion about the game, and it showed up in a major newspaper’s Sports section!

Soccer, as it is called only here, has never caught on. Around the world, however, "football" is No. 1.

Why? It's obvious to me that the main reasons are that, despite thousands of kids playing herd-ball soccer every Saturday around the U.S., we still haven't developed into a quality national power, and most Americans don't have an appreciation for the game's subleties. Also, the MLS doesn’t approach the quality football that others around the world get to see.

Many deride the MLS, calling it Minor League Soccer. Soccer fans who watch games from Europe and South America on cable television would certainly agree. MLS games often feature mediocre individual skills, strategic dullness and lack of flow to the game, which is crucial to its beauty. I am soccer fan, and I rarely watch MLS games.

Why else hasn't it caught on, besides the MLS? Three main reasons (these are overly simplistic for brevity’s sake): the games tend to have low scores; penalty shootouts are an unsatisfactory end to the game; and the good-hearted dads (and moms) who are youth coaches are generally clueless about how to play or coach the game.

The beauty of the game is a combination of fluid movement of individuals as they move the ball into a position to score and team member interaction as they touch the ball and move about the pitch in seemingly random, but very clever ways designed to get the ball in the back of the net. The average person doesn’t see this. They are ball-watchers.

When the scores are often low and when the games too frequently end in penalty-kick shootouts, the blood-lust for multiple scores and wild action among American fans that we see in a 42-21 NFL game or a wreck-filled NASCAR finish is hard to find.

The penalty kick shootout is an unsatisfactory way to end a game. Imagine if tied baseball games ended in a five-pitch-per-team home run derby. Play the game until someone wins, sudden death or not.

Finally, most youth coaches are simply not trained or experienced enough to properly prepare our young players. I say this with the utmost respect and gratitude for the good people who give freely of their time.

I spent 18 years as recreational and an advanced youth soccer coach and I took the training to gain a D license, or the highest one at the state level. I spent many hours learning how the game is played and how to coach the game. Along the way, I witnessed way too many coaches who simply weren’t preparing kids to understand the game or play it well. They couldn’t because they didn’t really understand it themselves.

The result is that not only does American soccer have a small fan base, we aren’t growing either new fans or new world-class players at a high level. I find that sad.