Brian Viner: Soccer in the cold as Sting and Wyn Davies take on Super Bowl

America is the ultimate goal-orientated society and soccer does not always deliver the goods

Yesterday morning I arrived home from New Orleans having stepped out of a Bateman cartoon: The Man Who Arrived In New Orleans For Super Bowl Weekend And Left Before The Super Bowl.

On Saturday, as fans of the St Louis Rams and the New England Patriots poured into town, I, to the disbelief of most people I met, scuttled away to the airport. Not that I minded too much. Anyway, my estimable colleague Jim Lawton was there on Super Bowl duty – indeed I met up with him in the French Quarter last Thursday for jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo (in the end, feeling terribly disloyal to the Carpenters, we settled for steak).

And Jim knows something of American Football, whereas my knowledge is limited, to say the least. If you asked me which pitcher slam-dunked the winning puck in the Super Bowl of 1966, I'm afraid I wouldn't have a clue, although I might just recognise it as a trick question – the Super Bowl only goes back to 1967.

I was in New Orleans to interview Sting, who was top of the bill at a CBS-televised concert on Friday night.

Sting did not stick around either, confiding in me that he too does not know gridiron from a travel iron. We rather bonded over our shared ignorance, in fact, and spent a gratifying amount of time in his hotel – while over-excited Americans passed beneath the window shouting "Go Rams!" – discussing his passion for Newcastle United (it was surely the first time that two men have sat in the heart of New Orleans reminiscing about Wyn Davies) and mine for Everton.

We continued chatting backstage at Friday's concert, both blithely unaware of the identities of the American Football superstars around us. I even mistook the hunky Patriots quarterback Tom Brady for a security guard, but at least I didn't disgrace myself by flashing my backstage pass at him.

Sandra, on the other hand, who works for Sting's record company and was there as my chaperone, did disgrace herself, asking a stagehand why there was such a big fuss over "that guy with the fake tan and the bouffant hair".

At a Super Bowl-related event this amounted to serious lèse-majesté. "That's Joe Namath," replied the stagehand, visibly offended. "He's a goddam legend." I confess that even I had heard of Namath, dashing quarterback with the New York Jets back about the time that Wyn Davies was dashing around St James' Park, but there was no particular reason why Sandra should have been familiar with his name. She comes from North Berwick, which to a large extent is an American Football-free zone.

Nonetheless, I wonder whether this mutual sporting incomprehension might subside a little as Americans become more interested in soccer? After all, among children under 14, soccer is officially the most popular participatory sport in America. In a magazine I read on the flight home, Sissy Spacek's daughter praised her mother's maternal instincts, saying that Spacek will always race out from home "if I forget my soccer cleats".

Actually, this helps to answer my question. Young Americans might be playing football – soccer – like never before, but they are doing so in their own language. Consequently, the gulf between us remains. After all, what the hell are cleats when (as in Sissy Spacek's forgetful daughter's case) they're at home? Moreover, the old Jesuit notion, give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man, does not seem to apply to soccer in America.

Apparently, once boys hit their teens, they realise that the round-ball game does not woo the girls. This is despite the fact that as many girls as boys play soccer, or more likely because of it. Whatever, as a friend of mine from Los Angeles puts it: "Boys go through puberty playing soccer, but then realise that the girls are more interested in the high school football team, especially the quarterback."

Jim Lawton told me that an American sports-writer once suggested to him that "a goalless draw is about as thrilling as kissing your sister".

The media are not on board, that's another problem. On Saturday, the USA soccer team beat Costa Rica in the final of the Concacaf Gold Cup. Even reaching the final was no mean achievement, yet it rated scarcely a mention in most American newspapers.

And what little coverage there was was hardly lifted by glittering prose. This is how the New York Times reported a doubtless exciting passage of play in the USA v Canada semi-final: "The United States almost scored when Josh Wolff hit a shot just off the crossbar in the 54th minute that fell right to Brian McBride. McBride had a clear shot, but Hirschfeld made the save. The rebound fell back to Wolff, who took another shot, which Hirschfeld saved. McBride then took another shot that Hirschfeld stopped."

That is sportswriting less from the school of Plimpton than the school of Trumpton. On America's sports pages today, I bet Super Bowl XXXVI will not be so poorly served.