A reader sent along this paragraph from a blogger who goes by Left Coast Sports Babe.

“Big sports news across the pond in England. BBC calling it maybe the biggest FA Cup shocker ever – Bradford City comes back from 2-0 down to beat Chelsea 4-2. And in the U.S. people are going, “who’s Bradford, who’s Chelsea, and what the heck is the FA Cup?'”

I imagine those three questions were asked by X percent of Americans, especially those above the age of 30 — though someone who is citing the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) ought to have an idea what those “exotic” concepts are about.

The reality is, the world is shrinking. A century ago, what happened on the other side of the oceans that separate the U.S. from Eurasia hardly mattered, because it took weeks to sail over there. Now? To fly New York-to-London is eight hours.

Many people in Eurasia know what Chelsea and the FA Cup are. In China. In Thailand. In India. Some of them have less access to information than does the average American.

And you don’t have to learn this so you can show off to your friends. You can bring yourself up to a basic level of understanding, and you then will be impressed by how concepts pertaining to sports across the pond begin to make sense. Leading from one “aha!” moment to the next.

Herewith, the English Premier League football primer. It will be semi-short. It will be painless.

Some handy information from the Premier League wiki entry:

“The Premier League is the most-watched football league in the world, broadcast in 212 territories to 643 million homes and a potential TV audience of 4.7 billion people. In the 2010-11 season, the average Premier League match attendance was 35,363, the second highest of any professional football league behind the German Bundesliga and stadium occupancy was 92 percent capacity.”

So, the Premier League is a much bigger deal to the world than is American football or baseball. Much bigger. It doesn’t show in terms of attendance; American sports occupy four of the top five slots in annual attendance. The Premier League is sixth. But its reach extends far outside its home country. The NFL’s does not.

Doesn’t hurt us, as educated, 21st-century Americans, to know a bit about this Premier League.

Twenty teams. Who play from August till May, home and away, against the other 19. Three teams change each season — the worst three drop down to the second level of soccer (the Championship) and the best three from the Championship come up to the Premier League. (Basically, allowing the league to avoid the Jacksonville Jaguars being around forever.)

A half-dozen teams are good almost every year. Including Chelsea, which is in London. Others top teams include Manchester United, the most successful Premier League team), Manchester City (owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi), Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham.

Soccer teams are a significant factor in the identity of many English cities. Most everyone in town will know the general history of their local club’s history. (And every town has a team.)

English soccer has about a dozen levels of competition, from the ultra-competitive Premier League, which is awash in money (Chelsea is owned by a Russian billionaire), down to barely organized “pub” teams.

The FA Cup includes all professional clubs, generally held to be from the fifth level on up to the Premier League. This year, 734 teams began the competition.

This is a particularly egalitarian concept even if, in reality, the little guys rarely beat the big guys — who don’t play in the early rounds. And even if they manage an upset or two, the little guys rarely get to get to the final, though they can celebrate things like third-division Bradford City 4, Chelsea 2, in the current FA Cup‘s round of 32.

The biggest surprise of recent vintage was Wigan Athletic defeating Manchester City 1-0 in the final two years ago. And the magnitude of that surprise is tempered by the fact Wigan at the time was playing in the Premier League — though Wigan was demoted at the end of that season. (League finish, FA Cup finish, two different things.)

The FA Cup is the world’s oldest soccer competition, going back to 1872. FA stands for “Football Association” — the name of the group that runs soccer in England.

It doesn’t hurt to know this stuff. Just as it doesn’t hurt to know the names of foreign capitals, and some basic geography (like, for instance, where on a globe U.S. servicemen are stationed) and the broad outlines of world history.

(Doesn’t mean you need to give up interest in American sports, or feel obliged to be up to the minute on English soccer. Not at all. I will never like soccer as much as baseball and basketball and American football.)

A former U.S. soccer coach, Alkis Panagoulias, used to say the image of the U.S. was damaged by the international perception that the U.S. hated soccer. Most of the rest of the world, he said, found that weird and a little disturbing.

Soccer is not the fringe American sport it was 30 years ago, when Panagoulias was the U.S. coach. Hosting the 1994 World Cup was a turning point, and the U.S. team has appeared in seven consecutive World Cups, making the quarterfinals in 2002.

Some knowledge about the Spanish and German leagues would be handy, but for today we will leave it at Chelsea, Bradford City and the FA Cup.

Chelsea: Serially successful London team of hotshot players owned by a billionaire.

Bradford City: Third-division team which has no business beating Chelsea.

FA Cup: Oldest soccer competition on the planet, and anyone in the top five divisions of the English sport can win it.

That is why Bradford City 4, Chelsea 2, in London, is big news, in most of the world.