Sort of.

“What an ass!” screamed Charles Guder, when the TV at Nathan Hale’s restaurant downtown showed national team coach Bruce Arena. “Look at him, he’s smiling now. He’s gone. He’s got to get fired.”

Whether it was the soccer nerds in team jerseys at bars like Nathan Hale’s, or the more affected Europhile types who snuck out of their jobs in media and publishing to witness the world’s biggest sporting event, New York has felt a little like Somewhere Else since the World Cup kicked off on June 9. New Yorkers, it seemed, cared about soccer.

So is it the arrival, finally, of the world’s most popular game as a major sport on America’s biggest stage?

Maybe not.

For one thing, the team isn’t cooperating.

In their first game at this World Cup—against the Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen, Germany—the United States stank.

A team of experienced Czech players from Europe’s top leagues towered over the nervous Americans, scoring three goals on their way to a depressingly easy shutout win. There was almost nothing good to take away from the U.S. team’s performance, and the coach and players descending into ugly recrimination after the game.

And if that was disappointing—particularly after America’s strong performances at two of the past three World Cups—it’s only likely to get worse this weekend when the U.S. plays Italy, the perennial world power that brought the world catenaccio: the defensive, aesthetically nauseating style of play that typically results in boring-but-inevitable 1-0 victories over inferior opponents.

From the perspective of soccer gaining a foothold in New York, an embarrassing setback couldn’t come at a worse time.

The sport is in a sort of limbo here. The legacy of the 1994 World Cup in America—the one in which the U.S. team emerged from the initial group round and scored a notable upset of Colombia—was considerable: the founding of a domestic league, a spike in public interest in the professional game and a seismic windfall for local bars when Ireland beat Italy at the Meadowlands.

New York was always a specially prized target for the soccer evangelists—the most cosmopolitan city, the most valuable media market, the most logical magnet for international luminaries of the sport.

And the dream almost came to pass in the 1970’s, when the New York Cosmos were here, spending insane amounts of money to assemble a team that included Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer and blowing away all domestic competition in front of sellout crowds at Yankee Stadium.

The most optimistic of the sport’s boosters feel that New York is on the verge of a return to that halcyon era, with interest in American soccer spilling out of the Spanish-speaking community—New York’s most reliable bastion of enthusiasm for the game—and into the mainstream.

“I think it’s definitely getting more popular here,” said Youri Djorkaeff, a former World Cup winner for the French team who now plies his trade for Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls. “When I was watching the France game today, there were American fans at the bar. When I watched the U.S. game yesterday, even though it didn’t go too well, I think it’s the first time you can really feel some excitement here.

“If you want to compare the U.S. to France, it’s the wrong way to look at it,” he said. “The fans are totally different. But it’s growing here. When I got here two years ago and went to the Nike Shop, I couldn’t find any soccer jerseys. Now they’re everywhere.”

But even with a player like Djorkaeff, the New York Red Bulls—formerly the New York/New Jersey Metrostars—are not the Cosmos. They fill a small fraction of the seats on a good day at their games in Giants Stadium. They have never won a league title. And instead of Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia, the team has featured a raft of likeable but eminently ignorable homegrown stars from the city and suburbs on Long Island and New Jersey.

There’s a parallel there with the national team, which has enjoyed some success in recent years, but is still stocked with players unknown to most American sports fans. (The team’s most marketable player, Landon Donovan, is a charismatic and occasionally exciting attacking midfielder who failed twice to make an impact in the German Bundesliga.)

Rather than take to the domestic game, which is still decidedly second-tier, some fans have been able to turn to a glut of broadcasts on cable from the English and continental leagues.

“I’m an awful American fan,” said Robert Jacklosky, an English professor at the College of Mount Saint Vincent who was watching the France-Switzerland game at a midtown bar. “I wind up watching the Premier League and Manchester United. There’s a little bit of self-loathing when I root for them, but it’s tough to watch American soccer.”

His feelings reflect a general breakdown of American soccer fans: They follow a foreign league closely, or just show up and watch the World Cup.

“I can’t believe Americans are actually into their team,” he said. “You see all these fans don the U.S. jerseys, but it’s like rooting for America in the Olympics. It’s jingoistic and fun, but a week later, you couldn’t care less. It’s hard to believe fans are really enthusiastic about beach volleyball. It’s the same thing with the World Cup. It’s about the moment.”

But it is the World Cup that is supposed to give the sport the boost it will finally need to approach the soccer fan’s dream of supplanting one of the area’s minor-major sports fixations on basketball or hockey.

It’s not entirely unreasonable. The Knicks are overpaid, unlovable losers. And hockey, well, it’s hockey—it has its limits.

Meanwhile, the New York region, a soccer hotbed that has produced a disproportionate number of the national team’s players in recent years, is as logical a place as any to capitalize on an international event like the World Cup.

“The interest is absolutely increasing here,” said Carl Christian, the 38-year-old British-born owner of Nathan Hale’s, who has lived in New York for 20 years. “The game has always had a fan base, but to average Americans and to my average customers, there’s just a lot more interest here. It’s meant so much more for business.”

Christian said on a Monday he will generally serve 40 to 50 lunches, but with the U.S.A. soccer team playing at a noon start, he served as many as 150 lunches.

“The love for soccer is a permanent feel here in the city,” said Jeff Z. Klein, an editor at The New York Times Escapes section who is co-writing the paper’s popular World Cup blog. “This isn’t just for the World Cup. When I hear people talking about ‘Oh, is soccer going to break through?’ I feel that conversation is so ancient. It’s been here for years. I love hockey, I can’ t find another person in New York to talk about hockey. But anytime I meet up with people in New York, they’re always talking about soccer. Whether foreigners, or New Yorkers, they know soccer really well.”

“When we think of New York sports, we think WFAN, but that’s just for a certain audience,” Mr. Klein said. “The WFAN audience and the Daily News audience isn’t going to follow it, but there’s a whole other swath of people who actually live in New York.”

But what of those WFAN types?

Here’s WFAN’s Joe Benigno on the dawning of a soccer age in New York:

“I mean, the kids are into it, but as a viable sport, no way it’s going to supplant any other big sport in the city,” he said in a typically impassioned phone interview. “The only time you get a buzz in the city is during the World Cup. Only because it’s such a big deal. But that’s it.”

The American team’s performance so far—a disaster by any measure—hasn’t helped.

It would, as U.S. goalie Brad Friedel has already said, take a miracle for the team to advance out of the initial group stage of the World Cup.

And if the U.S. gets swept out of the tournament in the next two games? What then for the lasting popularity of soccer in New York?

“If you lose three games,” said Andranik Eskandarian, who played for the Cosmos in their glory days, “it’s going to be a big blow. It’s going to be bad.”

Sort of.

“What an ass!” screamed Charles Guder, when the TV at Nathan Hale’s restaurant downtown showed national team coach Bruce Arena. “Look at him, he’s smiling now. He’s gone. He’s got to get fired.”

Whether it was the soccer nerds in team jerseys at bars like Nathan Hale’s, or the more affected Europhile types who snuck out of their jobs in media and publishing to witness the world’s biggest sporting event, New York has felt a little like Somewhere Else since the World Cup kicked off on June 9. New Yorkers, it seemed, cared about soccer.

So is it the arrival, finally, of the world’s most popular game as a major sport on America’s biggest stage?

Maybe not.

For one thing, the team isn’t cooperating.

In their first game at this World Cup—against the Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen, Germany—the United States stank.

A team of experienced Czech players from Europe’s top leagues towered over the nervous Americans, scoring three goals on their way to a depressingly easy shutout win. There was almost nothing good to take away from the U.S. team’s performance, and the coach and players descending into ugly recrimination after the game.

And if that was disappointing—particularly after America’s strong performances at two of the past three World Cups—it’s only likely to get worse this weekend when the U.S. plays Italy, the perennial world power that brought the world catenaccio: the defensive, aesthetically nauseating style of play that typically results in boring-but-inevitable 1-0 victories over inferior opponents.

From the perspective of soccer gaining a foothold in New York, an embarrassing setback couldn’t come at a worse time.

The sport is in a sort of limbo here. The legacy of the 1994 World Cup in America—the one in which the U.S. team emerged from the initial group round and scored a notable upset of Colombia—was considerable: the founding of a domestic league, a spike in public interest in the professional game and a seismic windfall for local bars when Ireland beat Italy at the Meadowlands.

New York was always a specially prized target for the soccer evangelists—the most cosmopolitan city, the most valuable media market, the most logical magnet for international luminaries of the sport.

And the dream almost came to pass in the 1970’s, when the New York Cosmos were here, spending insane amounts of money to assemble a team that included Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer and blowing away all domestic competition in front of sellout crowds at Yankee Stadium.

The most optimistic of the sport’s boosters feel that New York is on the verge of a return to that halcyon era, with interest in American soccer spilling out of the Spanish-speaking community—New York’s most reliable bastion of enthusiasm for the game—and into the mainstream.

“I think it’s definitely getting more popular here,” said Youri Djorkaeff, a former World Cup winner for the French team who now plies his trade for Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls. “When I was watching the France game today, there were American fans at the bar. When I watched the U.S. game yesterday, even though it didn’t go too well, I think it’s the first time you can really feel some excitement here.

“If you want to compare the U.S. to France, it’s the wrong way to look at it,” he said. “The fans are totally different. But it’s growing here. When I got here two years ago and went to the Nike Shop, I couldn’t find any soccer jerseys. Now they’re everywhere.”

But even with a player like Djorkaeff, the New York Red Bulls—formerly the New York/New Jersey Metrostars—are not the Cosmos. They fill a small fraction of the seats on a good day at their games in Giants Stadium. They have never won a league title. And instead of Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia, the team has featured a raft of likeable but eminently ignorable homegrown stars from the city and suburbs on Long Island and New Jersey.

There’s a parallel there with the national team, which has enjoyed some success in recent years, but is still stocked with players unknown to most American sports fans. (The team’s most marketable player, Landon Donovan, is a charismatic and occasionally exciting attacking midfielder who failed twice to make an impact in the German Bundesliga.)

Rather than take to the domestic game, which is still decidedly second-tier, some fans have been able to turn to a glut of broadcasts on cable from the English and continental leagues.

“I’m an awful American fan,” said Robert Jacklosky, an English professor at the College of Mount Saint Vincent who was watching the France-Switzerland game at a midtown bar. “I wind up watching the Premier League and Manchester United. There’s a little bit of self-loathing when I root for them, but it’s tough to watch American soccer.”

His feelings reflect a general breakdown of American soccer fans: They follow a foreign league closely, or just show up and watch the World Cup.

“I can’t believe Americans are actually into their team,” he said. “You see all these fans don the U.S. jerseys, but it’s like rooting for America in the Olympics. It’s jingoistic and fun, but a week later, you couldn’t care less. It’s hard to believe fans are really enthusiastic about beach volleyball. It’s the same thing with the World Cup. It’s about the moment.”

But it is the World Cup that is supposed to give the sport the boost it will finally need to approach the soccer fan’s dream of supplanting one of the area’s minor-major sports fixations on basketball or hockey.

It’s not entirely unreasonable. The Knicks are overpaid, unlovable losers. And hockey, well, it’s hockey—it has its limits.

Meanwhile, the New York region, a soccer hotbed that has produced a disproportionate number of the national team’s players in recent years, is as logical a place as any to capitalize on an international event like the World Cup.

“The interest is absolutely increasing here,” said Carl Christian, the 38-year-old British-born owner of Nathan Hale’s, who has lived in New York for 20 years. “The game has always had a fan base, but to average Americans and to my average customers, there’s just a lot more interest here. It’s meant so much more for business.”

Christian said on a Monday he will generally serve 40 to 50 lunches, but with the U.S.A. soccer team playing at a noon start, he served as many as 150 lunches.

“The love for soccer is a permanent feel here in the city,” said Jeff Z. Klein, an editor at The New York Times Escapes section who is co-writing the paper’s popular World Cup blog. “This isn’t just for the World Cup. When I hear people talking about ‘Oh, is soccer going to break through?’ I feel that conversation is so ancient. It’s been here for years. I love hockey, I can’ t find another person in New York to talk about hockey. But anytime I meet up with people in New York, they’re always talking about soccer. Whether foreigners, or New Yorkers, they know soccer really well.”

“When we think of New York sports, we think WFAN, but that’s just for a certain audience,” Mr. Klein said. “The WFAN audience and the Daily News audience isn’t going to follow it, but there’s a whole other swath of people who actually live in New York.”

But what of those WFAN types?

Here’s WFAN’s Joe Benigno on the dawning of a soccer age in New York:

“I mean, the kids are into it, but as a viable sport, no way it’s going to supplant any other big sport in the city,” he said in a typically impassioned phone interview. “The only time you get a buzz in the city is during the World Cup. Only because it’s such a big deal. But that’s it.”

The American team’s performance so far—a disaster by any measure—hasn’t helped.

It would, as U.S. goalie Brad Friedel has already said, take a miracle for the team to advance out of the initial group stage of the World Cup.

And if the U.S. gets swept out of the tournament in the next two games? What then for the lasting popularity of soccer in New York?

“If you lose three games,” said Andranik Eskandarian, who played for the Cosmos in their glory days, “it’s going to be a big blow. It’s going to be bad.”

Whiffs of a contingency plan, though seldom aired in public, have permeated the local planning process for at least three years. In 2002, after the United States Olympic Committee demanded that U.S. contenders produce stadium-backup strategies, NYC2012 raised the possibility of building a stadium in Queens. Now that plans for a West Side stadium seem to have sunk into the Hudson River, some New York politicians and Olympic boosters hope that those early ideas may be revived. Of course, Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't one of them.

"Well, there's no chance the stadium could be built elsewhere and help us to the Olympics, because the rules of the International Olympic Committee are you have to submit a plan. It can't have backups or anything," said Mayor Bloomberg during a Q.-and-A. session in Harlem on June 7. "It can have one plan, and you have to follow that plan."

The Mayor's perspective, however, differs subtly from NYC2012's official line. According to spokesman Laz Benitez, the issue isn't that New York can't have a backup plan, but rather that the city shouldn't have one.

"The I.O.C. doesn't require a backup plan," said Mr. Benitez. "Basically, to the I.O.C., a backup plan is a sign of uncertainty. That's not part of the bid process with the I.O.C. They want a commitment to one facility," he added, contrasting the I.O.C.'s method with selection process of the USOC, which does require a backup plan. "We could've taken it upon ourselves to include a backup plan, but with that said, that would've been frowned upon, because it's uncertainty."

Mere uncertainty, however, might be considered a luxury this week. Compared with the cut-and-dried despondency of the current equation-no West Side stadium equals no Olympic bid-it's hard to envision that simple uncertainty would feel worse. This is according to Brian Hatch, who was the deputy mayor of Salt Lake City during the preparation phase of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Now a New York resident, Mr. Hatch is a consultant on transportation, municipal and urban-policy issues and has sparred against the idea of a Manhattan stadium on his Web site, www.newyorkgames.org.

"The bottom line is this: A Queens stadium is better than no stadium, and right now they have no stadium, and that is absolutely unacceptable to the International Olympic Committee," said Mr. Hatch. "You must have an Olympic stadium, as the Mayor and NYC2012 have been reminding us for two years."

Representative Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn, a candidate for the Democratic Mayoral nomination who would like to see an Olympic stadium in Willets Point, Queens, went out on a limb and wrote his own letter to the I.O.C. "The Olympic Committee wants a guarantee, so here it is," he wrote on June 7. "As mayor, I will guarantee that an Olympic stadium and broadcast center will be delivered on-time at an alternative location should the International Olympic Committee select New York on July 6." (The part about "should the people of New York select Anthony Weiner for Mayor" was left out.) Lest the declaration seem a bit presumptive, Mr. Weiner also urged his fellow Mayoral candidates to follow suit and pledge their commitment to an alternate stadium site.

So what exactly would a Queens stadium entail? Back in 2001, when the U.S. Olympic Committee demanded backup plans, representatives for NYC2012 toured several neighborhoods in Queens: Willets Point, Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, College Point and sections of downtown Flushing. According to an NYC2012 internal memo dated Jan. 22, 2002, the group concluded that the area's best options lay in the vicinity of Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadow. The memo proposed three different models for a possible Olympic stadium: a 75,000-seat football stadium in a parking lot west of Shea Stadium; an expandable 25,000-seat soccer stadium for later use by the New Jersey–based MetroStars, in the same parking lot; or a temporary conversion of Shea Stadium, which would have involved raising the field by at least a foot and extending the outfield wall.

Two months later, NYC2012 expanded the last of these three options into a more detailed plan, complete with sketches for a "temporary Olympic retrofit" of Shea Stadium. The plan read: "Based on a preliminary review, the existing Shea Stadium could be converted to Olympic use and returned to its baseball configuration after the Games. As a multi-purpose stadium and former home of the New York Jets, the main seating bowl is reconfigurable and [considerably] larger than other single-purpose built structures." It also noted that "the USOC does not want to discredit or jeopardize any existing stadium proposals, and therefore has not requested a formal submission" and that "the best alternative to the Hudson Yards Olympic Stadium is the Shea Stadium/Willets Point Vicinity."

In November 2002, New York triumphed over San Francisco to win the U.S. Olympic nomination. And as the city scrambled to structure its bid for the second and final heat of the race-judged by the International Olympic Committee-earlier notions of a backup plan were left behind. Shea Stadium slipped quietly off the table.

To wit, on May 4 of last year, Jay Kriegel, the executive director of NYC2012, sent a letter to Robert Yaro, the Regional Planning Association president. "In short," Mr. Kriegel wrote, "there is no Queens alternative. Each of these three proposed sites would not just weaken the bid but would probably be fatal to it." Along with the earlier plans, which had mentioned Shea Stadium as a possible location, he cited two other Queens contenders: Sunnyside Yards in western Queens, which would require the construction of a massive deck over the Amtrak rail yard, and Willets Point, home of the 80-acre "Iron Triangle," a desolate stretch of land inhabited by chop shops and an asphalt plant.

Mr. Kriegel argued that all three options would be at least as costly to build as the West Side stadium, if not more, and that none of them could be completed on the Olympic timetable. He also added that they "have no after usage and therefore run counter to the I.O.C. guidelines."

No Alternatives

This February, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff quashed the possibility of a Queens proposal yet again. "There is no alternate plan. There never has been an alternate plan," he told a New York 1 reporter. To be fair, in the context of the international Olympic bid rather than the domestic one, he may be right. Still, with the West Side stadium plan taking on water, local officials who originally favored a Queens stadium wonder whether it's too late to renew the call.

"Queens already has the transit infrastructure there, so it's accessible," said Jeremy Soffin, director of public affairs for the Regional Plan Association. "It's not a central business district, so it could potentially be more compatible with the uses there, which already include a stadium, obviously. And a lot of people have made the case that Queens is the natural host for the Olympics because of its tremendous diversity." He conceded, however, that while the Olympic clock ticks on, the hour is late.

"I think their strategy was to show no chinks in the armor, in an effort to pass a project that was very complicated. That may be a risky strategy, but it may also have been the only one that could have worked. Obviously, there were many people who pushed for a backup-and you can certainly argue that when it looked like it wasn't going to happen in time, that they could have gone to a Queens alternative. But they were committed," he concluded. "It's easy to question in hindsight."