Firing up a Neil Young album, not playing chopsticks on the piano, is the best way to get a child hooked on music. So I should not have been surprised to hear a soccer insider say that the best path to a better understanding of the world’s most popular sport lies in taking in a World Cup game on television, rather than attending a clinic for beginners.

“You get a good feel for how the game is supposed to be played,” said Lawrence High boys soccer coach Mike Murphy, who has been watching the World Cup games on TV with his 11-year-old son. “You see how they use space. You see the movement off the ball to keep the passing lanes open.”

Meaning?

“A lot of times soccer players will get caught up in ball-watching,” Murphy said. “They’ll stand there after they pass the ball, instead of pass and move. At this level, you can see constant movement and the flow with the shape of the formation, whatever the strategy is. Those midfielders are constantly sliding and moving, sliding and moving, and the distances they cover, some of them run six, seven, eight miles during a game.”

A chip in the players’ shoes calculates the distance, and it’s not a potato chip they spilled while watching ballgames on TV. These guys are in phenomenal shape.

This particular World Cup, packed with dramatic, late-game heroics, has caught the attention of the Lawrence sporting public, and not just from the Sporting KC fans who routinely pack the Red Lyon (944 Mass St.) for games.

Soccer is selling itself better than at any time, thanks to the style so many teams feature in the World Cup.

“A lot more goals,” Murphy said. “It just seems like teams are playing much more aggressive and all-out attack, which is more exciting for the fans.”

Murphy never quite bought into the belief of some that the Jabulani ball used in the 2010 World Cup was to blame for the lack of scoring.

“I think it’s the mind-set of the new wave of coaches and players,” Murphy said of the increase in scoring. “They’re much more offensive-minded. With the aggressive, attack formations, it’s a little more high pressure, getting the ball up to the strikers.”

It makes sense coaches have taken this approach, Murphy said, because it syncs up perfectly with the talent cycle.

“It’s a cool era,” he said. “There are a lot of talented, big-name strikers right now, a lot of talent in their prime. Not aging strikers, but strikers in their prime. If you have that kind of talent, you absolutely want to get them the ball.”

Team USA’s top striker, Clint Dempsey, is the highest-paid player in Major League Soccer (the Seattle Sounders are paying him $6.695 million in 2014).

Dempsey, midfielder Michael Bradley and extraordinary goalkeeper Tim Howard lead the good guys into battle against Belgium at 3 p.m. today.

Murphy has watched Belgium play plenty.

“They’ve got a lot of talent and haven’t seemed to be able to get as many looks as you would think,” Murphy said. “For the talent they have, they should have been more dominant in their group. That scares me a little, makes me think they have a great game bottled up inside them, and it will come out against the U.S. I hope not. I think it’s going to be a great game. It’s going to be an exciting game. I think the U.S. can win it if they play their cards right.”

If the guys in red, white and blue can get it done against Belgium, they would advance to the quarterfinals, meaning eight countries would remain standing (check that, moving).

I wondered: If the U.S. were to win it all, would that constitute an even bigger upset than the Miracle on Ice, when Team USA shocked the world by defeating hammer-and-sickle-wielding Cold War foe, the Soviet Union, on the way to winning the gold medal in hockey at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games?

“I don’t know about that,” Murphy laughed. “That was pretty amazing, a bunch of college players doing that. It would be amazing, but certainly not to that level.”