What, you didn’t catch Liverpool storm back against Manchester City last week? You missed Wayne Rooney’s 58-yard wonder goal against West Ham United?

There was a time not long ago when Americans — even worldly New Yorkers who regularly logged on to The Guardian website and claimed knowledge of the best little out-of-the-way pub in Shoreditch — could float along in a happy bubble of ignorance, pretending for all practical purposes that the world’s favorite sport, soccer, did not exist.

That time appears to be fading quickly. With fan interest booming, soccer is no longer the Kylie Minogue of the sporting realm: huge everywhere but here. After years of being greeted as the Next Big Thing that wasn’t, the sport (particularly England’s Premier League, with its enhanced presence on American television) has become a conversation topic you can no longer ignore.

This is particularly evident in New York creative circles, where the game’s aesthetics, Europhilic allure and fashionable otherness have made soccer the new baseball — the go-to sport of the thinking class.