The French aristocrat and the all-American idiot: Henry v Lalas is the World Cup’s most compelling battle

W e all know someone like Alexi Lalas. He’s the ranter whose rants never actually say anything, the life of the party at the party no one enjoys attending, the “big personality” who’s always misjudging the size of the room. He’s corporate America’s idea of a fun guy, the type of workplace “character” whose business trip hangover never stops him from being first at the hotel breakfast buffet, hair wet, Untuckit shirt untucked. He would absolutely dominate karaoke night at a conference on infrastructure finance. If only this were the limit of Alexi Lalas’s actual impact on the world, our culture would live in blessed ignorance of his existence. But in the real world Alexi Lalas is not a small-time menace working the floor at an infrastructure conference. In the real world Alexi Lalas is American soccer’s brightest media star, and he is everywhere this World Cup. When Lalas’s Roger Ramjet jaw thrust into frame on Fox at the start of this tournament, it’s fair to assume that many viewers felt a sense of dread similar to that expressed in the Grand Theft Auto meme : “Ah shit, here we go again.” Lalas’s ubiquitousness every World Cup is American TV’s answer to the Iran war: no one wants it, everyone hates it, and as it drags on, it inevitably becomes a face-saving exercise in damage limitation. …