SOCCER DESERVES A CHANCE.

Byline: STEVE DILBECK

Here is a little offer. Really, it's not so hard.

Something you can do. All that's needed is an open mind.

Clear all preconceived thoughts, banish all that nasty negativism, release your sporting inhibitions.

And then give soccer a real chance.

Hold it, don't go anywhere. Stay with me just awhile. This is not painful. Try to think of it as mind-expanding.

Understand that for most red-blooded American sports fans, this somehow smacks as a threat to our national way of life. First it's soccer, then it's -- it's -- it's something really close to Armageddon.

Unwind here. Relax. It's a sport, not a revolution.

It's a little ball, not an ICBM.

Unlock your inner sporting prejudices. Honest, your mother will still love you.

The timing here is good. Just possibly you've heard, but there's this guy named David Beckham in town. He is the most popular athlete in the world. More popular than Alex Rodriguez or Kobe Bryant or Maria Sharapova or Peyton Manning or Tiger Woods. Somehow, still even more popular than Amanda Beard.

He's now a member of the Galaxy, which is not a reference to his star status, but a Los Angeles team in Major League Soccer.

Beckham makes his Galaxy debut Saturday, and all the soccer world is agog. Einstein reincarnated couldn't cause such a sensation.

Anyway, most of the world is excited. There is this one little stretch of Earth where it barely registers. That would be the portion that makes up the United States of America.

To maybe 75 percent of Americans it's, who cares? It's soccer. It's boring. Not remotely on their sporting radar.

They dismiss it out of hand. They feign world-weariness. If they looked any further down their noses, soccer would be played in the netherworld.

Maybe it's an OK sport to get a bunch of kids off the couch and running around, but then you grow up and play a real sport. Like poker.

People complain about low scoring, though I'm pretty sure they score more in soccer than NASCAR.

People sniff at some hooliganism they heard about from 10 years ago. Laugh at player melodramatics to draw fouls.

Listen, every sport could stand some improving.

Soccer should ban those plastic horns from every stadium under penalty of death. Join the new millennium and have the referee's stopwatch tied to the scoreboard. Loosen up on the substitutions.

Yet the sport offers immense appeal for men and women. It requires tremendous athleticism, endurance, strategy. You know, the things Americans normally covet in their sports.

Just not in soccer. There is an almost visible wall of resistance. To almost the entire world, it is easily the most popular sport. There has to be something there worth giving a look.

They certainly don't love it just to spite the U.S. It isn't, "I'll show those imperious American blowhards, I'll like soccer!" They are truly passionate about the sport. They like it because the game offers wondrous elements. Because it's about skill and effort and teamwork.

Every country has sports it treasures that are not significant here. Cricket, ping pong, rugby, badminton -- sports that are played little here or not at a high international level.

Yet soccer in this country is too often disparaged like it's beneath us. Like it challenges our culture. Threatens to undermine our American way of life.

You'd be concerned it smacked of bigotry -- "Look, they're coming over the border wall heading soccer balls!" -- if the sport wasn't universally popular in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Most Americans are raised on the big three -- football, basketball and baseball. They understand those sports. They're comfortable with those sports.

They are not comfortable with soccer. Not comfortable with a sport they may never have played and don't truly understand.

Hey, just a little effort here. Americans have made NASCAR enormously popular. It has embraced Mixed Martial Arts and every extreme sport this side of tiddlywinks.

They can't give soccer a real chance?

To dismiss it as boring is simply a cop out. That smacks of someone who hasn't taken the time to learn the sport, who is uncomfortable with something new.

Soccer is not trying to overtake the NFL. It's not attempting to replace the NBA or NASCAR. Nobody has to feel threatened.

Soccer simply deserves more respect in this country from the sporting hoity-toity.

Beckham brings notoriety to soccer. Brings glamour and the kind of attention no other player can. Brings another reason to watch.

It is a great moment to give the sport another, or a real, look. The last time we had this opportunity was 13 years ago when we hosted the World Cup.

That worked out amazingly, then everybody went back to wondering if Dallas could win a third consecutive Super Bowl. Stick with it a bit.

The Galaxy is not of the caliber of Beckham's last team, Real Madrid, or, as will be apparent Saturday, Chelsea FC.

But it's the highest level soccer we have in this country, and improving.

Beckham is less a super-scoring player than a playmaker. He is worth watching. Most of the world will be.

Give it a chance. The White House will still be standing in the morning.

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