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If it weren't for electricity, we'd all be watching television by candlelight.

I used to play all the time. I would play football when it was light and read when it was dark.

In sum, we took energy for granted, assuming when we flipped the switch, the lights would go on and assuming that there would always be plenty of cheap fuel for our vehicles.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you.

There's not a lot of light on television.

Our television transmitters leak out from the Earth. And actually, there's a sphere surrounding the Earth from the earliest television signals, maybe 70 years ago, that's going out one light year per year. But it's really weak.

In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night.

While American football is very structured and linear and static - where everyone lines up, and there's a burst, and it happens - soccer is like the cosmos. It's like constellations. It's bodies moving in space. It's a very spherical game.