The Non-Sporting Gay Guy's Guide to the World Cup

Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast and Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal
actually embrace at the World Cup Tournament after merely having
been photoshopped together on a recent Vanity Fair cover.

Soccer. Your people call it "football." That's really quaint, but misguided since football is already in use to describe that game they play with all the Super Bowl commercials. But hey, just to prove I'm not a culturally insensitive American, I'll refer to this soccer thing you got going as "football" within this post.

We strive to be a well-rounded website around here, so I got tasked with writing something up about the 2010 World Cup. Trouble was, I knew practically nothing about the event starting out, other than it involves a cup of some sort and lots of countries are involved. And people really seem to get worked up about it.

Oh, to have this guy's enthusiasm.

I'm sure I'm not the only non-sporting gay guy who feels left out of the party. Since a lot of AfterElton.com readers (particularly the American ones) might share my woeful ignorance of this much-heralded international event, I decided the best thing to do was synthesize my exhaustive research of the World Cup (thanks Wikipedia!), gay translate all the sports speak, and try to explain the whole thing in terms even queer sports idiots like myself would understand.

So this is my Non-Sporting Gay Guy's Guide to the World Cup! You'll get a brief explanation of the tournament scoring, some background on teams to root for, find out who is favored to win, and most importantly - lots of photos of handsome soccer... sorry, football players!

And away we go.

Fun Fact #1: Did you know the World Cup only happens once every four years? Like the Olympics, back before they split up the Summer and Winter parts to make it every two years - and somehow less special. At any rate, since the World Cup is only every four years that helps to explain why people get so excited about it. That, and it's a great way to channel nationalistic aggression with much less hassle than going to war.