It's not big over here, but back during the last world cup I could not stop watching matches--very strange too as i'm not a big sports fan at all. It's a great game. But I don't keep up; it's not one that's easy to get into casually here, especially if you are usually quite apathetic about sports. So anyway, I was wondering if the many football-inclined amongst you could tell me this--I have two questions:

1) I don't actually know the exact rules, specifically. Is there, on the vast internets, a good guide for the beginner soccer fan? The kind that is sports-dim and doesn't fancy reading at length on that?

2) What the hell do I do about club allegiance? Course normally you are a fan of the local team, along with most people around you, but it's hard to get excited about a team whom nobody you have ever met is excited about as well. It's like the team doesn't actually exist. Would it be too scummy of me to pick, sort of arbitrarily, a team somewhere people care about football?