I am actually a huge World Cup fan, so if you’re looking for some good ol’ fashioned soccer trashing, you’ll have to go somewhere else. Not too many days ago, I heard a sports talk radio guy say that he didn’t like any sport where you have to “understand the intricacies” in order to appreciate it.

Heaven forbid we’ve got to think about our sports! After all, they’re supposed to be stress-relievers. (Dare you to make that argument to a soccer mom who’s on her ninth practice of the week, by the way!)

The fact is the good folks at FIFA and ESPN would like you to believe that sports—and especially the World Cup—go far beyond a little bit of stress relief. Soccer/football (a nod to those who know what the game is really called), they say, is capable of changing the world itself. The Cup will unite us and inspire us and cause all aspects of life to appear rosier in most every way. If I sound like I’m exaggerating, note that I am simply echoing what the TV and radio ads have been telling me for several weeks.

I was reading quietly in the lobby of my son’s physical therapist early this morning, where I was repeatedly approached by staff members asking if I wouldn’t rather move to where I could watch the kick-off of the opening match. I didn’t mind the request, but neither did I miss the irony that they all did: my son has been under their care for the past month because of a soccer injury. Maybe the medical bills soccer has sent to my mailbox might actually have turned me off to the sport by now—they haven’t, but couldn’t this be possible? Either way, the sport isn’t the cure-all it’s promoted to be.

Of course, no sport is. In January, an article in Time magazine reported on the pervasive human trafficking that occurs in South Africa. The article opened in a hospice a few blocks from Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, alongside a 17-year-old victim of AIDS and TB, made so because some of her “clients” did not wear condoms. I put clients in quotes, because while this girl, Sindiswa, collected the money, it was not hers to keep. It went to her buyer.

Last summer, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that he was aware of the very real concern among women’s groups that the World Cup would not provide wonderful outcomes for those locked in the sex trade as slaves, but rather increase the demand for their “services.” He assured that systems were being put in place to hinder such a boon. His announcement came a few weeks after Sindiswa’s death.

I’ll watch the World Cup. I’ll enjoy its close contests, my excitement fueled by a suspense that builds throughout the game—which, Mr. Sports Radio Guy, is why soccer is such a great sport.

But I won’t put my hope for world peace or a renewal of international justice or some glorious celebration of “the human spirit” in the Cup. My hope for all that is good rests elsewhere.

Now if only all those people watching “the most viewed sporting event in the world” could just see that hope with me…