I’m not what you’d call a patriot or a nationalist. I’m not proud of most of the things that the US has done in the name of freedom and democracy, especially lately. If I ever do celebrate and sing America, it’s in a very tempered way. I’ll quietly think to myself or remark to friends that the ongoing political experiment that is the USA hasn’t been a complete and utter failure. Consider how many ethnicities and religions live here, often occupying the same or proximate spaces, without resorting to open warfare to settle their differences. Well, hardly ever, anyway. The US Constitution, for all it has been abused, is still a remarkable document, to my mind — strong, flexible, reasonable. I’m often momentarily (not terminally) ashamed to be an American, but I’m very rarely proud either.

But an internal conflict flares up and runs riot within me every four years when the World Cup rolls around. I root for the US with a visceral passion that defies my many misgivings about our country’s history and its economic and political global domination. Watching the US team play in the tournament, I can hardly sit still, jumping and flinching with every twist and turn of the matches, pulling for them with abandon.

This year I’m watching most of the games on a tiny borrowed portable TV I’ve set up on my desk at home. (I’m fortunate to live in a city where Univision broadcasts every game, no cable needed.) In the US’s first game, the Czechs scored very early, and I slapped my forehead so hard that the cat, sleeping peacefully next to my computer monitor, started and woke up. When the US captain Claudio Reyna barely missed a goal a few minutes later, I leapt out of my chair and gasped in dismay. Sensing my bristling tension, the cat moved off to find a better napping spot. Eventually, I settled into a glum state of disbelief after the second and third Czech goals (to the US’s none), tears welling in my eyes at the final whistle.

For the second US game, played on a Saturday, I met a friend at a bar to watch on a large screen. She shares my enthusiasm, both for the sport and the US team. Together we hooted and hollered throughout the match, the only ones in the room jumping out of our chairs. I did a little dance of celebration when the Italians scored an own goal to tie the game up for the US. Striding around in a circle, I flapped my arms in a vain attempt to get the rest of the room more involved. It’s not like I’m normally subdued, but very, very few things inspire me to such displays of pure displeasure or delight.

I’ve never fully explained to myself or others this nationalist fervor for US soccer. I don’t feel this way during the Olympics or other international athletic competitions involving the US. Even though I’m a big baseball fan, I barely paid attention during the “real” world series, played among teams representing a handful of countries.

Partly, this feverish support comes from an identification with the US soccer players, who have worked unbelievably hard to develop the game in a country much more interested in other, homegrown sports. I started playing pee-wee soccer myself in the late 70s. My town didn’t even have a league, so the kids’ parents had to drive us to another town 25 miles away to participate there. We were terrible, generally, but we had fun. In my freshman year of high school, the sports program finally started a boys’ soccer team (there had been a girls’ team for years). By the time I graduated, we had gone from losing all but one of our games the first season to going undefeated in our league. It was a great pleasure to return to the fields where we’d been thrashed just a few years before and open up a can of whoop-ass of our own.

The US team does not play a beautiful or technically proficient game, but they’ve traveled the same general narrative arc, from unlovable losers to, well, World Cup qualifiers on a regular basis. For 40 years, from 1950 to 1990, we didn’t even make it to the tournament, but since then have made the cut every time (with one free pass for hosting in 1994).

More than this, though, I think that I’d like to see the US do well in soccer because it’s the one truly global sport. Everywhere else, even in countries who don’t qualify, the World Cup is a huge event. To do well in soccer (or at least respectably well) is to show that we share in the cultural concerns of the rest of the world. To get humbled by the Czech Republic is to show that we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable to others, that we respect them enough to get our asses kicked by them on the soccer field. To outplay (well, arguably outplay) Italy at a sport in which they are 3-times World Cup champions is to integrate ourselves more fully into the global cultural organism. Playing well during the World Cup could help earn the respect of millions of people who hate the US for its bullying politics and militarism.

Of course, this could be a somewhat unconvincing rationalization for what may just boil down to the knee-jerk patriotism of a sports fan, but if it makes me even a little more comfortable supporting a team whose traveling group of fans call themselves (I kid you not) “Uncle Sam’s Army,” well, I’ll take it.