NEW YORK — Anyone channel surfing Sunday in search of one of the endless pregame shows dedicated to the Super Bowl might have stumbled on a weird item billed by Fox TV as the “Greatest live Premier League match in U.S. television history.” This featured the other sort of football, known in the United States as soccer, an encounter between Chelsea and Manchester United, rivals no less bitter than the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

Now it’s disconcerting to find guys, some of them short, running around without helmets passing the ball with their feet in a game often decided by a single goal — or not decided at all! — when you’d expected to find the two-millionth analysis of the incredible coach-quarterback combination of the Patriots’ Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, but Fox clearly believes it’s onto something with live soccer.

I wish Fox luck. Americans are more interested in what kind of good-luck hamburger Giants coach Tom Coughlin ate, or which ads — at an average of $3.5 million for 30 seconds — punctuate the Super Bowl than they are in a bunch of wimps (as they see it) playing soccer.