I don’t remember much of those days long past when it seemed like the only source of timely soccer information in the United States were those old guys of ambiguous ethnic extraction who hung out down at the corner.

Yes, I’m sure they had great information, and I’m sure those “when I was a boy we didn’t have old guys to tell us about soccer” stories were really first rate. But the development of my appetite for soccer news happily coincided with the development of the internet. Let’s face it, the internet is a big improvement over a bunch of creepy old guys.

While I don’t remember much from the “dark ages” when US soccer fans had to scrape together information from whatever irregular sources they could manage, I do remember those early days when the growth of the internet sparked something of a soccer enlightenment in this country. Email lists. Can you imagine!

Today I think we’re quite used to seeing the USMNT on television. But back in the day national team telecasts were a rarity. Until the internet there often wasn’t any way to follow the game in real time. I can remember “watching” matches on the internet even before MatchTracker. You had to hit refresh manually! And all you got was the score.

Streaming audio was a major breakthrough, and I can remember listening to World Cup qualifiers on the internet. Often the broadcasts weren’t even in English. Today fans would be up in arms about such a thing. And they were certainly up in arms back then too. (Some things never change.) But, at least after we sobered up and calmed down, we could admit it was something of a miracle that we could follow a game on the internet in real time at all.

So here I am following the USA play Canada in a friendly down in San Diego. It’s not on TV. But I’ve got my streaming audio – in English, no less! And I’ve got my BigSocer in one window, and I’ve got my AIM chat in another.

It’s just like old times.