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An ongoing series on how Jersey City soccer fans — and those who aren’t — watch the games.

That loud friend in a group of friends is animatedly rehashing the A-Rod/Dallas Braden controversy in O’Hara’s Downtown — this despite the 10 or so wide-screen HD televisions showing the final match of the World Cup, despite the mostly filled bar of Spanish and Dutch loyalists, even if just for the time being. There is a practiced emphasis in his storytelling, and his friends, who likely don’t closely follow baseball if they haven’t heard this story already, are laughing politely at the details. He’s louder than the announcers’ voices coming from the television sets, louder than the vuvuzelas that are criticized beyond their minor inconveniences. The match’s action, in particular what at this point in the game already feels like futile attempts at scoring a goal and the crowd’s emphatic reactions, give pause to his storytelling, but just for a moment. It seems that some sports fans will not be persuaded by soccer under just about any circumstances.

Meanwhile, one fan (finally someone louder than the storyteller) is calling “bullshit” on one of the 14 yellow cards in total given by British referee Howard Webb (who just so happens to be a police officer when not working the pitch). There are pockets of protest at this, and also pockets of cheers, but no interaction in between the two groups. It’s unclear just how much “bullshit” is involved in the call until further examination of the replays show the Netherland’s Nigel de Jong’s flying jump kick landing spikes-first into the chest of Spain’s Xabi Alonso with no hope of hitting the ball. This is the kind of ugly, dangerous play that should be solidly in red card territory, which the announcers acknowledge and that the referee has apparently missed. But other than the quieting of the Dutch fan protest, there isn’t much in the way of outrage among the attendees.

In a decent sized bar, the cohesion necessary for shared viewership, in particular for soccer, seems somewhat absent here. Which isn’t meant to suggest that O’Hara’s, one of the more traditional sports bars in Jersey City, is lacking in any significant way. Note again the walls of wide-screen HD televisions, the beer specials (those $2 Coors Light draughts for the World Cup, for one), the fans who come out in colors (one Spanish fan is flag-adorned), and of course the pub grub, the onion rings and nachos making the rounds. But how then does this layout — a long bar along one wall, round tables with high chairs against another, and more restaurant style seating in the back — translate for watching soccer, as compared to say, sports more closely associated with the U.S.?

Take, for example, Zeppelin Hall, with its long wooden tables crowded with fans out of necessity of space, and the various groups of strangers commingling. This isn’t to compare bars so much as to compare how sports are, could and perhaps should be watched.

Baseball — with the tension between batter and pitcher, with slow moments of communication on pitches between the mound and the catcher behind the plate, the crescendo of fans in attendance, the camera cutting to the crowd rising to their feet — is appropriately associated with individual moments. The somewhat isolated tables serviced by the wait staff makes the O’Hara’s layout more appropriate for this, and other sports more closely associated with the U.S. (the stop and starts of football, with numerous and long pauses in between plays, as a second example). But the appreciation of no-look heel passes, of slow midfield possessions like a team of Spain’s style — all the little things worth noting in a low scoring sport like soccer — doesn’t translate in the spaciousness of some sports bars.

It is not until the end of the game, when the second yellow card, thus making it a red, is given to the Netherland’s John Heitinga, that the bar starts to show more signs of life. The replay of his shoulder-pushing takedown of Xavi Hernandez of Spain looks, as another fan says, “like [Xavi] is a puppet on a string.” The first fan, encouraged and encouraging in his outrage, adds, “This game is fucking fixed.” Meanwhile, one can imagine that the Spanish fans, on the whole more numerous and vocal than the Dutch fans in the bar, were thinking back to the lack of red for the Netherland’s de Jong and his flying jump kick.

So went grace as well as some of the ostensible good will between nations’ fans that the World Cup hopes to inspire, but at least the individual spectatorship in the bar finally began to break down. Too little, too late, however, as another World Cup wraps up.

And so Spain has their first World Cup title, while the Netherlands takes home their third failed finals bid. And, of course, Germany’s oracle octopus’ perfect record edges its way from the novel to the slightly unsettling.

For the time being daytime sports-watching comes to an unfortunate end. Which, coincidentally, means those 10 am bar visits that fall somewhere along the gradient of “acceptability” slowly shift in the other direction, and “dedicated fan” becomes “dedicated drinker,” both of which were found, and frequently, in these updates. Well, this is the way of things, for sure. Whether you watched the games at a bar, or on ESPN3 or univision.com’s stream at work, or a friend’s, you have four more years to wait.

In the meantime, we do in fact have a league in progress here, and your second place New York Red Bulls have games but a PATH ride away. Something to think about on those long commutes to work suffering from World Cup withdrawal.