By Ken Jackson
Sports Writer

FOR SALE: Slightly used vuvuzela. Like new, works great. Helpful for waking sleeping children, annoying neighbors and English and French soccer fans, and funneling engine coolant. Price negotiable, OBO.

With that, the World Cup thrill is gone. At least it is on this side of the Equator.

The United States team returned home to various levels of pats on the back after its showing, and based on Landon Donovan's gleeful appearance on David Letterman's show, the government's executive branch will let them stay and wear their jerseys.

You think I'm joking. Be glad we don't take this stuff seriously, unlike some countries who wouldn't be so accepting of advancing out of the first round at the last minute (or 90 seconds past that) and losing to a place like Ghana, who would only be allowed at the G20 Conference if the NCAA Basketball Tournament committee got to pass out the invitations.

On Wednesday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan (that's neither a typo nor a joke) suspended its national team from playing international games for two years because of its three-and-out trip to South Africa. Seems a middle schooler can't remember the country's last World Cup win (1998).

The team federation even apologized to the government and "all football loving Nigerians" for its bad play, but it still got red-carded by the Prez Goodluck. (OK, I'm still chuckling.)

This came after the French government wagged its collective finger (Or was that a fluffy baguette?) at its team for not exactly following up last Cup's runner-up finish the same way. They wagged so hard that the FIFA people actually told French aggressors, for the first time in recorded history, to settle down.

Can you imagine if we put our team under that stress? Our team just shows up and hopes someone at home is watching, without worry that our president will reroute its return flight home to, say, Montreal.

(Besides, Obama seems like the ultimate cool cat. Who can imagine anything that would get him that riled up?)

But, even as the World Cup quarterfinals go on without Uncle Sam's team, most seem pretty happy with how they represented the soccer-intolerant U.S.A.

Hard to be unhappy when you look around at our neighbors and peers. Canada didn't get in. Mexico went out the same round as us, along with England and Portugal, who we beat to get past the 2002 opening round.

Then there's the aforementioned French and the Italians (2006's title game, by the way) who also said an early "Arrivederci."

On the bright side, there was a chance that the World Cup Final Four would be the salsa-ing crew of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

If that pans out, why don't they just move the semifinals and finals to Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires?

Bienvenidos hombres y amigas! Welcome to the Sao Paulo Airlines South American Soccer Invitational, presented by C.A.O. Cigars! Because if Lionel Messi or Kaka light you up, you can do the same to our Robusto Gold!

If we do get those four, I imagine that South America, as a whole, will have a cow. (By the looks of portly Argentine coach Diego Maradona, he's already had his, with some potatoes.)

An Argentina-Brazil final, for instance, would be like a Cowboys-Steelers Super Bowl, but with more animosity south of Brazilia.

Latin soccer is a Fun-n-Gun offense, so it would be like watching the Gators line up against Texas Tech. The stuff that we got accustomed to this time around, like United States-England, is a grind-it-out, wear-the-other-guy-down sort of mind cramp — kind of like, say, Penn State vs. Wisconsin.

No wonder we can't get into soccer. Imagine what Joe Pa would think of a chorus of vuvuzelas. (The cheap ones.)

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A word of warning to those lighting stuff on fire this weekend: Be extra careful. It's hard to turn newspaper pages or visit aroundosceola.com without fingers.