I came into the World Cup 2010 a capital-V virgin. You could have traced a red lipstick V onto my forehead. Maybe it was the result of growing up in soccer-denying Canada where the only memories I have of the game were of torturous gym classes, and my gasping for breath or fretting over the possibility of cramps. (I was not a jock nor prone to watching professional jocks, except hockey players.)

Even as Canada made its first (and to date, its last) World Cup appearance in 1986, I had no idea. Too busy focusing on the plight of Wayne Gretzky and Marc Messier to notice our first-round wipe-out: 3 games = 0 goals for = 3 losses. There was no slashing of National wrists, no sporting suicide in the headlines of Canada’s ignoble, calamitous defeat. Canada shrugged its shoulders and moved on. Some might argue that we deserved such a fate. We should not have been there. And that we have not been back suggests that, as a nation, we agree. Soccer is just not our game.

The truth is that unless you are born and raised in a soccer-minded football house, the kind that bristles at the mention of the word soccer, unless you have the blood of the Azurra or The Three Lions or Brazil in your veins, soccer is not a part of your D.N.A.. There is too much cultural influence on hockey for soccer to take a bite. Add the NFL, NBA, MLB and now UFC, and you have a sports-climate that is controlled to freeze out soccer. Worse so than in the USA. (Were Liverpool to ever draft a boy from Kingston Ontario, this might change. Draft 20 of our lads, then we’ll pay attention.)

By 1994 when the World Cup was held in the USA, I didn’t care about sports, really, and soccer least of all. I watched tennis and golf when I was bored in the summer. (Golf and Tennis were much easier to find on the TV anyway.) As the MLS was born, I was unaware. Between the Rangers and the Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals and then OJ, I was too preoccupied to care about a European game that seemed to revere listless, goalless games and the occasional stadium-wide riot.

What little I knew of the game was the base deductions of the infrequent but often ugly headlines that crept onto our sports ticker: riots, clashes, failed drug tests and the murder of Andreas Escobar.

The poetry of the game was lost on me: all I saw were huge nets and final scores of 0-1 being heralded as epic tilts. Where was the action? Where was the contact?

Oh, to say I was naive is to be kind. I was ignorant. Worse, I was cheated. I was 34 when the World Cup went to South Africa. This would be my first tournament. (First!) To have been denied the rich history of the game, self-denied no less, seems so incomprehensibly stupid of me now. I blame the Canadian school curriculum.

In the previous two or three years leading up to 2010, I began to explore the niggling curiosity I had for this game. I needed to understand what the appeal was. In a universe seemingly in awe of this game, what was I missing? I had watched the grand tournaments of basketball, golf, tennis and baseball so as to learn about the game. (It took three years but eventually I began to appreciate baseball, but my flirtations with the other sports were seasonal at best and never lasted past a second year.)

Okay … so what was the deal with soccer? Why did this game attract so many hooligans, looneys and wing nuts? Why were Europeans so smitten with their 0-0 score lines? What made Beckham worth so much to clubs like Real Madrid? And why was Canada just about the only country that could not care?

I happen to have German roots, just none of the soccer-loving type. But I used those roots to explore the game. The Germans are not a bad group to have represent the game, I suppose. I adopted the German National squad as my own and eventually followed the Bundesliga and Bayern Munich. I didn’t know Munich was the much-loathed mirror of the New York Yankees in Germany, but I made my decision then and my loyalties have not budged.

I began reading soccer books. I watched the epic documentary The History of Football. I bought a PS3 and a FIFA game and played digitally if not physically. I subscribed to various cable networks so as to get myself match fit before the World Cup. Incredibly, I even began getting up at 6am on Saturdays and Sundays to watch the English and German fixtures. I even caught some games from Uruguay and Russia. Before long, I was hooked.

The speed of the game, the fluid passing, the gob-smacking goals, the righteous headers, and the heart-busting saves. The uniforms were sleek, the crests were honourable. The philosophy of play that separated Germany from Italy from the MLS was somewhat clearer now. I marvelled at the cardio of the players and the rigours that constant challenges took on them. And almost at once, all other sports lost their appeal to me.

The 2010 World Cup overloaded my virgin senses. Messi, Ronaldo, Villa, Alves, Forlan, Klose, Muller, Ribbery, Suarez, Fabregas, Robben, Dempsey, E’to, Drogba, Cesar, Rooney, RVP, Alonso, Lahm, Tevez… it was all too much too soon. And when it ended, with my Germans coming in a respectable but unsatisfactory third, I was already hungry for 2014.

In a few days, the long-awaited meal for myself and millions of footi fans will begin with a tasty appetizer of Brazil versus Croatia. (On paper a one-sided massacre but … ?) For Brazil 2014, I have traded in the lipsticked V on my forehead for a more noble and seasoned F for fan(atic).

From June 12th to July 13th there is nothing on my agenda but the beautiful game. As befitting any World Cup, there will be history and drama, possibly even tragedy. The World Cup serves this all up in liberal doses. And unlike the past ten years of Stanley Cups, Super Bowls and World Series’, I will be able to recall these matches, the lineups, and the story lines as far into the future as 2022. Nothing puts the spectacle into spectacular as the World Cup. And whatever befalls Germany (anything less than 4th would be crushing), I will roll on into each round a captivated fan as history is unveiled before my eyes.

Even if I have to endure the occasional 0-0 scoreline, my attention won’t dwindle. Soccer is the one true global sport. Some of us just take longer to catch on, that’s all.