Philadelphia is no longer the City of Brotherly Love. It has been balkanised by soccer, split into raucously bickering ethnic tribes. All of which makes it a great time to be a football-loving Philadelphian.
In an Italian social club in south Philly a bunch of visiting genteel English folk are watching the USA launch its desperate two-footed suicide attack on Italy's football testicoli. We sit with our arms folded, stunned into silence by the on-screen mayhem and the accompanying frantic, pulse-pounding, no-brakes 900mph Mexican-Spanish commentary.
Everybody else in the room is Italian-American and they are going nutjob bonkers crazy-in-the-head mental with hope, frustration and rage, waving their arms, roaring themselves hoarse. Nobody is speaking English. Everybody is fervently supporting Italy. Or keeping very, very quiet.
"The Americans are at war," complains blue-shirted Domenico Nigro at half -time. "It's like they're in Iraq!"
Domenico and his brother Carlo - proud Americans both - are typical South Philly Azzurri loyalists. Before the game, Carlo texted everybody in his cell phone with "Forza Italia!"- and was appalled to get "USA! USA!" responses from Italian-Americans, He shakes his head in disbelief.
Meanwhile, just up the road in Genos Philly cheesesteak restaurant, the owner, Joe Vento, continues to cause uproar with a sign, aimed at Mexican immigrants, reading: "This is America. Speak English."
"We only have room for one flag - the American flag," he told a Philly radio station, making local rightwing shock-jocks purr with approval. "And we only have room for one language - the English language."
If Joe were to wander into the soccer-frenzied Circolo Ricreativo Italiano right now, he'd witness a scene that'd break his bigoted little heart.
"Circus! Diablo! Qué!? Qué!? Qué!?" screams the Mexican commentator from a TV screen flanked by both Old Glory and the Italian tricolore.
"Passare! Passare!" roars the guy at the table next to us.
"This is fucking insane!" laughs my chum English Tom (looking slightly out of place in his reproduction QPR shirt) as Italian elbow smashes into Irish-American skull and the first red card is flashed.
All around us members of Mr Vento's South Philly Italian-American community are gleefully failing Norman Tebbit's cricket test, howling at every American foul, groaning at every American shot, waving the Italian flag and yelling increasingly foul abuse at Italian-American US manager Bruce Arena and Italian-American US player Pablo Mastroeni.
This sports-mad city has been torn apart by the World Cup, but in a good way. The Center City boutiques have been kitting out the city's normally sports-shy hipsters in groovy knock-off England/Brazil/Mexico shirts and tracky-tops for months now (the number of teenage white kids you see in dodgy gothic-lettered England tops verges on the disturbing).
And (to the consternation of the soccer-phobic local papers) the innumerable English and Plastic Paddy theme pubs, German biergartens, Mexican cafes and Brazilian and Portuguese restaurants have been ram-packed, day-after-day, with roaring football fans.
"Five hundred people ... for soccer?" gasped an amazed punter when he turned up to find his local bar taken over by happy Germans (or German-Americans or just Americans in Germany shirts - it's hard to tell).
Unfortunately the sheer joy of World Cup barhopping - of diving into different pools of fervent fan-flesh and experiencing the World Cup (even at this distance) as an amazing cultural smorgasbord - has been lost of some of Philadelphia's more politically correct soccer-citizens.
When I asked my right-on soccer playing buddies for help with an article about where to watch the World Cup in Philly in the company of real fans, one replied sniffily:
"I personally don't appreciate informing/promoting/categorising venues based on fan base ... So much for bringing people together with the beautiful game, eh!"
Uh, yeah, whatever. This ability of some Americans to miss the bleeding point of international soccer entirely (oh why can't we all just be neutral and appreciate the game?) is intensely irritating - especially when it falls from the sneering lips of those one assumes are soccer-sussed.
The bestselling American soccer book right now - actually, make that the only American soccer book right now - is The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup.
The writing is crisp and but the tone is elitist and exotic. Despite the fact that soccer has colonised America more successfully than any foreign cultural import since spaghetti and meatballs, Thinking Fan's editor Sean Wiley positions the American fan as a rootless flaneur, able to pick or change team allegiance based on whim or idle fancy. And then he sticks an effete boot into those Americans who succumb to "tribal allegiance". Which is, of course (as fellow contributor and England supporting anti-racist liberal Nick Hornby could have told Wiley) to miss the point so completely that you have to wonder what attracted the fool to the game in the first place.
Meanwhile, back at the Italian club my English pals and I are trying to explain the apparent mad randomness of soccer's red and yellow cards to English Tom's American partner ("That's all part of the game, right?" she says, as Brian McBride's head wound spurts claret all over his stunned face).
All this Anglo-yakking attracts disapproving glances from a few of the older Italian-Americans. I know that look. It's the same frowning scowl I've seen English expat football fans give Americans in brand spanking new Chelsea shirts when they call penalty-kicks "PKs", shout "Offsides!" or loudly discuss whose gonna win the basketball College World Series (my money's on Connecticut).
Before we leave I ask Carlo who he fancies for the US v Ghana.
"Ghana" he says. "I'll tell you this - an African team is going to win the World Cup before the US does."
My Anglo-chums and I (after secretly and silently cheering on the plucky Americans for the previous nerve-shreddingly demented 105 minutes) retire to an American themed pub (serving bottled beer from at least a dozen different countries). There we meet an Arsenal supporting Irish barman (who we know from an English soccer pub) who is incredibly excited to show us the huge bag of Maltesers, Tetley tea bags and Quavers that he's just blagged from a ridiculously expensive transatlantic import shop.
"And I even got" he whispers, looking around furtively, "... a Curly-Wurly!"
Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away, folk flooding out of yet another bleeding soccer pub are heading into Genos for a cheesesteak, most of them (thank God) speaking the glottal Irish/Italian/African/Mexican/Vietnamese tinged polyglot mish-mash that passes for English in (temporarily) soccer-mad South Philadelphia.
