LONDON -- Is this the end or the beginning? Does soccer, football to the rest of the world, finally capture the United States? Or was this World Cup fascination only a brief affair, a fling encouraged by ESPN, and little more?

Does it become only a sweet memory in anticipation of Drew Brees and Peyton Manning coming to training camp? Or when you think of fullbacks will it mean players who kick a round ball as much as those who occasionally carry an oval one?

In England, Spain and the Netherlands, in virtually every place other than Canada, Australia and South Africa, soccer is the only game in town. The Brits may have cricket and a bit of rugby, but it's football, football, football. Theirs, not ours

Literally 365 days a year there's soccer in the papers, a fact noted a while back by Harvey Greene, the public relations man of the Miami Dolphins, who said he could only wish his team had in the U.S press a fraction of the stories appearing on soccer in English publications.

The NFL, our league of choice, is dominant in America, but compared to soccer in England, it's a piker. The coverage of our pro football isn't even close to that of their pro football.

We change seasons and sports, baseball, football (in England, they call it gridiron), basketball, hockey. The pros play. The colleges play. The high schools play.

A variety of competitions and competitors, as opposed to this country, where there's only one game in town. Any town.

Back then, when the North American Soccer League started, and Pele and Beckenbauer in their athletic dotage were lured to the U.S., soccer zealots, a humorless, intense assemblage, kept telling us we were out of step with billions around the globe.

"You Americans are stupid,'' an immigrant from Hungary shouted at me. "You don't understand. You are alone.''

Soccer, we were told, would be America's "Sport of the ‘70s.'' Well, the '80s. No, the ‘90s. How about the 2000s? We kept ignoring the advice. We were too busy watching Reggie Jackson or Michael Jordan or Joe Montana.

Now, we're not about to forget about the Saints or Lakers, but maybe starting in 2010, soccer finds more than a niche in America. And we (blush) stop making jokes about little guys grabbing their ankles and falling down.

Games and teams have transcended borders. There are Yankee and Red Sox hats in abundance in Britain; Manchester United or FC Barcelona shirts around the U.S. And we have been informed that in China the jersey of Kobe Bryant practically is in greater demand than in Los Angeles

That David Beckham was a celebrity as much as a goal scorer was the sort of jolt soccer needed in the U.S. Especially in Los Angeles, where the Hollywood crowd embraces the unusual - or with the Lakers, the successful - and establishes trends.

English Premier League games are shown on U.S. TV though the fall and winter. Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba are not yet Albert Pujols or Peyton Manning - or at this moment, LeBron James. But they push the needle. That's progress.

Which is what soccer made in America during the World Cup. Large TV screens were set in U.S. cities. The team competed, qualifying for the knock-out round. We briefly became addicted, even after the national team was eliminated.

The hourly drumbeat of analysis was unstoppable. The England team's near mutiny. The French team's embarrassment. And wasn't Brazil supposed to in the finals? It was national chaos. It was great theater.

Who cared about soccer? This was history and mystery and vuvuzelas to a faretheewell.

Where does it go? John Lewis is marketing director of something called Santa Barbara Soccer Entertainment, which Saturday is hosting an exhibition match - soccer calls it a "friendly'' - at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena between two teams from Mexico, Cruz Azul and Club America.

Acknowledging he has a personal stake, perhaps it is wise to be wary of his enthusiasm.

"I don't think it has set in,'' Lewis told the Pasadena Star-News about the score that lifted America in the knockout round of the World Cup, "what Landon Donovan did when he got that goal against Algeria. He lifted the sport.''

If only for a few days. Americans are notorious for short attention spans. How many people, other than Boston fans, stay the full nine innings of any baseball game?

We'll follow the Cup through Sunday. Our curiosity is running wild. Netherlands or Spain? The last chapter. After that? Do we follow soccer? Or does it slip back in the shadows until 2014? Not even Landon Donovan has the answer to that one.