21.   An SUV filled with skiers or young soccer players is a good thing.

22.   Among them are a soccer player and a softball player, both new Olympic sports for women.

23.   And after Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar embarrassed his country by kicking a soccer ball into the wrong net, he returned home where his country embarrassed itself.

24.   And European soccer players regularly demonstrate against racism and violence, to little avail.

25.   And his Algerian heritage has come to symbolize the diversity of a nation that also fields soccer players from Ghana, Armenia and Senegal.

26.   And it put in the middle a soccer player whose brilliance was too quickly taken as a metaphor for a change in national political temperament.

27.   And soccer players, especially American ones, are among the friendliest athletes in sport.

28.   And we are not allowed to freely associate with the soccer players.

29.   And so the Nike poster athlete of the new millennium is a female American soccer player, Mia Hamm.

30.   And soccer players are following a free agent trail of riches.