No matter how well a U.S. site covers the World Cup, odds are folks who call it ?football? and other hard-core U.S. fans are probably spending a lot of their Internet time in other countries.

Aided by some bleary-eyed -- their professor?s description, not mine -- enthusiasts who work for OJR, I spent some quality time at a variety of sites devoted to World Cup coverage.

		No matter how many favorite sites you have somewhere else, BBCi’s multimedia football wonderland is likely to be a stop on the journey.  For many it could be the only stop.

First lesson: you can?t properly plan a global soccer viewing experience without a visit to SoccerTV.com, which appears to be based in the U.S. and is geared toward die-hards. The site is invaluable when it comes to finding out what?s on when and where it can be seen. It has also figured out how to make a few thousand dollars by selling listings to restaurants and pubs that feature soccer on satellite.

After that, good, or at least interesting or useful, sites can be found in almost any language and devoted to almost any aspect of the game.

For English speakers or readers, Great Britain is the soccer equivalent of Mecca. No matter how many favorite sites you have somewhere else, BBCi?s multimedia football wonderland is likely to be a stop on the journey.  For many it could be the only stop. 

Try hard as I might, I don?t like the BBCi front-page layout -- lots of function but no form -- but there?s no denying its value as a top-notch source for any number of topics about the World Cup.  Once you get to individual subject pages there?s more personality and more direction to what?s potentially valuable, epending on your interests.

In fact, outside of its wee organizational issues, to recast a phrase projected onto the walls of Buckingham Palace during the Queen's Golden Jubilee Celebration, there are lots of reasons to say God save the Beeb.

Even so, I have to admit a preference for the rival Guardian Unlimited football site. This site?s producers know how to make use of the medium. If I gave out points, they?d get them for features like the Excel World Cup planner, the soccer equivalent of a Final Four bracket but with macros that update the standings as you enter information. You can use the spreadsheet to play against a computer when it comes to predictions and to check your results. There?s also a clever Flash-based quiz. 

Each day the site posts a photo and invites contestants to guess where the ball would be if you could see it. The picture is laid out on a grid so, for instance, clicking near the right foot of the English goalie in the first day?s offering put my guess in g12. The winner gets a color pocket TV delivered within 24 hours. All the site asks for in return is a name, email address and phone number; entrants can click on a box to get ?just one e-mail about other good football stuff at Guardian Unlimited.?

During the match between the United States and Portugal, I checked in at several sites that offered running commentary. I may not know a lot about the sport but I know enough to appreciate Sean Ingle of the Guardian, who pulled off the doubly amazing feat of making running commentary not only lucid, timely and personable but also predicting at the start of the match that the U.S. was about to shock the world.

I tried the Mirror, good for gossip, I heard but never could get the site to load on Netscape 6.2. Thanks to the Online Wall Street Journal, I made my way to PlayerWatch, a British site with a PlayerMeter that tracks players by the number of stories it can link to about them. Even better, it doesn?t stop at English-language stories, providing news in six other languages, including Svenska and Norse, and offers translation via Altavista.

Venturing outside the UK, two English-language sites in India drew my attention. New Delhi Television with MSNBC leads off with a cogent roundup, sort of all you need to know about the in 100 words or so, and a live update scoreboard.  Sports portal Khel.com blends gossip, lifestyle and hard sports news in an easy to navigate, colorful package.

A new resource still being developed provides the chance to look at the way numerous outlets are covering the Cup around the world. Norbert Specker at Interactive Publishing has started the World Cup equivalent to his snapshot archive of September 11 coverage.   The new archive now in progress not only provides snapshots or screengrabs of Cup coverage by match, it has links to each of the sites,making it a good launchpad for anyone interested in exploring diverse Internet coverage of a global event or looking for different ways to follow the Cup.