The New Reality of the New Wold

I left Los Angeles late yesterday evening to return to the Old Continent.

It remains a place that is equally strange and fascinating. It's truly a metropolis of the modern world.

The five-county LA metropolitan region is the home to more than 20 million people with very diverse backgrounds.

It is not only the second largest Mexican city on the planet, but also a ranking Korean, Iranian, Armenian and Ethiopian metropolis, not to speak about all the Europeans to be found there.

So the World Cup there has been somewhat problematic.

A few nights ago, thousands of Koreans gathered in their part of town to join the national mourning back home as their team was defeated by - of all people - the Swiss. The Koreans made the front page of the LA times.

But it's really been Maexico that's been popular.

Statistics from the cable TV companies highlight the nature of the city at a time of global conflicts like these.

And they demonstrate that there are far more fans of Mexian soccer teams in the LA market than there are passionate supporters of the USA squad. And neither team seems to have done spectacular.

It's not only that the matches involving the Mexican team have been far more watched, it's also that this has been done in Spanish rather than English. The combined Mexian rating on Spanish-language TV has been 21,7 - compared with 11,9 for the USA games.

It's the new reality of the New World that is emerging.