I really hope my children, if I ever have them, don’t inherit whatever it is in me that wants to burst out in a smile, let out a scream and chest-bump strangers when the University of Florida football team wins a big game or, conversely, jump from the top of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium after a loss.

It can be a miserable existence, and luckily I wasn’t around in the 1970s. Then again, there were few expectations in those days — at least compared to now.

I guess being a fan — which, according to Ken Burn’s “Baseball” series I’m watching now, originated from references to baseball fanciers or fanatics — is about managing expectations. Really, life, I’m finding, is about that.

My expectations ran high this spring and summer for the various teams I follow, either through birth (UF and U.S. Soccer) or an unexplainable feeling of kinship (Manchester United). But none of the seven that had a shot at the ultimate prize was able to lift a trophy or hang a banner this year.

With three minutes left in Sunday’s World Cup final, I thought the U.S. women’s national team would come through. It was a goal up, and the players could almost feel the elusive (in the last 12 years) cup in their hands.

But Sawa, the Japanese star whose first name escapes me, was able to get a bouncing ball in front of net and tied the match. The rest — and the U.S. team — is history.

While there will be more games and more championships, that heartache does linger, as melodramatic as that might sound, for a time.

But, I suppose, you manage the pain, too, and move on to the next season. That sounds familiar.

Earlier this month, I went to Washington, D.C., for the Fourth of July, and there’s something about the capital — particularly around Independence Day — that elicits faith in the country.

It reminds of the myriad reasons America is good — democracy (even though Washington’s license plates scream in protest “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”), freedom and The Washington Post.

Soccer doesn’t always make the list.

Just ask Abdul.

Abdul was a household name across his country, wowing Afghani crowds with his soccer skill. That was a lifetime ago. Earlier this month, he was waiting tables during the breakfast shift at a hotel restaurant in Arlington, Va.

It’s not clear how much of what Abdul told us was true: whether “everyone knew” him in his homeland when he was a young man. There’s only so much you can discern from chit-chat with a waiter. But it was clear that he had no interest in D.C. United, the professional club in his new hometown.

The skill just isn’t good enough here, he said.

I’m not a savvy enough soccer observer to know how truly poor (relatively speaking) the play is in the American top flight. But I was impressed with some of the shots and passing when we took in United’s 2-2 draw with Mid-Atlantic rivals Philadelphia Union on July 2.

What was obvious to anyone at the half-empty, aging, made-for-baseball-and/or-American-football RFK Stadium that night was that soccer is not an American institution.

But here comes the U.S. women’s national team, which is about to take the pitch in Germany to face Japan looking to win its third World Cup title (which would be a record).

If that happens, the team will be on the front of every major newspaper in the country in the morning and will provide plenty of fodder for sports journalists — and would even outside of the doldrums of summer.

Why? America doesn’t like the game.

Not really, but America does like winning. See: American Revolution.

Cue the Greewood. Go Yanks.

Earlier this month I went to my first international soccer match since attending World Cup matches in Orlando in 1994, and it was the first time I’d ever seen the U.S. team.

Despite the relative lackluster stature of both the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the Panamanian side the Americans were playing, I couldn’t wait. At 2 a.m. the day of the match, Danny Klein and I went to Walmart to get an American flag. At the stadium, we draped it over the wall, which we pounded when Landon Donovan came to our corner to take a kick.

Naturally, the U.S. lost, 2-1, its first-ever loss in the group stage of the Gold Cup.

But it was an incredible scene, even for a Gold Cup group stage match against Panama in Tampa. Panama had thousands of fans, chanting, waving flags and blowing whistles. The American supporters club was throwing flares onto the pitch. There were a few near-fights in our section, instigated largely by Americans who didn’t appear to be true soccer fans — more like guys who wanted to go to a stadium and drink beer, regardless of who was playing or the sport.

After going down 2-0, we were deflated, losing hope with every missed chance. Then, when Clarence Goodson connected on a header in the middle of the second half, the place went wild. In my celebration I accidentally hit my friend Mike McCall in the head. There was hope again.

And though the game ended with more talk about Bob Bradley losing his job, the team has rallied, beating Panama to get to the final against Mexico tonight. What I wouldn’t give to be at the Rose Bowl for that game, win or lose.

In back-to-back years in the 1990s, the Bernkastel Festhaus club dominated Port Orange youth soccer (or at least one age level of it).

Aside from having the best kit sponsor (and by kit I mean a T-shirt), we had the best coaching and talent around. At least from what I can remember. I do clearly recall receiving two gold-painted trophies declaring us champions. I also remember one magical afternoon I was better than Maradona. I don’t remember it well, just that my parents were out of town and that I scored the only two goals of the match.

I don’t know how many more seasons I played — maybe two — before jumping to American football, where I was deemed an offensive lineman. But a few years ago — as I got more and more into watching the beautiful game again — I bought some boots (or cleats, as you colonists would say) and joined a summer league in St. Augustine. I didn’t play well, but my one shining moment came in a game against Flagler College’s summer squad. One of the players was dribbling toward the goal, and I came in with a slide tackle and got the ball. I still got a yellow card (slide tackles weren’t allowed int that league), and that more than made up for my goalless season.

Since then I have been playing off and on at various fields. My buddy Mike McCall and I have recently started going head-to-head with penalty shootouts, and I’ve had a few shots to be proud of.

The next goal is to score one again in league play, even if it’s a league for middle-aged guys in Gainesville who haven’t played since their elementary school days — in my case, the glory years.

In 1994, when I was too young to really appreciate it, my dad took me to World Cup group games in Orlando, where I got to see counties like Morocco and the Netherlands on the pitch. Even though I don’t remember much about the actual matches, I clearly remember the masses of painted and screaming fans thousands of miles from their home countries. And I remember my dad getting my brother a yellow vuvuzela from a street vendor. That’s a noise you never forget. You’ll see if you haven’t already.

I have been to a lot of sporting events — two Final Fours, a number of national football championship games, a handful of Daytona 500s, Olympic events in 1996. I have been to Fenway Park and Dodger Stadium, and I’ve witnessed a Premier League match. I saw Mike play the Magic and was there when Earnhardt was killed. And the Cup in ’94 is still among the highlights. More than the Olympics, it creates this sense of national anxiety, that it all rests on the lads on the pitch. In the Olympiad, one country might be a traditional power on the track while another is a force in gymnastics. But in the Cup, it’s all equal. Not to mention the sport is universal. Likely no one in Mozambique gives a shit about the uneven parallel bars, but you can be sure the whole country will be watching to see whether the continent’s best player, Didier Drogba, is in the lineup for Ivory Coast.

More than in 2006, when the United States limped back home with one point after the group stage, I am anxious about this tournament. Part of that is my trepidation about how well the U.S. will fare after watching some shaky performances in qualifying and after a number of injuries. Another part is my torn allegiance.

Given my love for Morrissey and my fondness for the British in general, I have been described more than once as an Anglophile. Just about everything English appeals to me — the cars, the accent, the Tube, The Guardian and, of course, the footy. Because of my keen interest in Manchester, I naturally adopted United as my club. (I chose the Red Devils over the Blues because of my hero’s tribute to the club and because of Old Trafford’s proximity to his hometown of Stretford.) I love how Wayne Rooney plays, and I love the history of 1966 and Bobby Charlton.

Then again, there was that tea tax and the massacre in Boston.

In the end Saturday, I would love to see us — the U.S., that is — win 2-1 on a Dempsey goal in the 88th minute. Then, after we have flamed out in the quarterfinals, I want to see Rooney wearing a grin on his weird, ruddy face as he hoists the trophy for the Three Lions.

Nevertheless, despite my English envy, I’m glad that Revolution didn’t turn out that way.