Lincicome: U.S. women, Messi madness have revived U.S. interest in soccer

Without asking, soccer has once again inserted itself onto what was once known as America's sports pages, a generational annoyance that leaves no lasting scars, not the pages, the sport. This time, however, the intrusion comes as twins, one known as Messi and the other as failure.

Let us take the second first. It seems someone is to blame for the U.S. women's team failing to resemble itself; that is, to be reliable trouncers of international opponents who, until the U.S. women showed them how, had to borrow shoes and sneak out of the house to play.

I come by that conclusion from a movie called “Bend it Like Beckham,” an inspiring tale of pluck and defiance where a girl's dream was not only to “bend it” but to come to America and be underpaid.

As for the “Beckham” part, I'll come to that later because that fellow has dipped twice into the dogged determination to grow the world's most popular game in infertile fields.

The U.S. women have done more to spread appreciation toward soccer hereabout than all the faded foreign fellows who have come and gone to show us how it is done, the aforementioned Messi being the latest.

World titles and Olympic medals became routine for the women, and general good will all around encouraged not only national pride but second thoughts that “football,” as it is known elsewhere, is not so bad after all and maybe midfield is as fine a place to be as shortstop or linebacker.

American women created a sport and a market where there was none so that when, inevitably, their old patsies in Spain and Sweden and elsewhere caught up, answers are now demanded as to how such a thing could happen.

Accusations flew and the coach quit, which only signifies the prominence of the thing, a compliment, really. When the coach is accused of sacrificing his midfield to get more numbers in the box, we actually know what that means.

If we are not careful, the next thing we'll recognize is the offsides trap.

Was it injuries, or ego or chemistry? Was it wokeness, whatever that is? Questions were being asked, answers demanded. So serious was the catastrophe that a former president used three exclamation points to exclaim “the USA is going to hell!!!”

To this I say, soccer has arrived. Thanks guys, and ignore the fellow with the orange face

And now back to Messi, the world's greatest soccer player. We know this is true because we are told it is true by folks who say it is. In truth, we wouldn't know Messi from mustard or that he has a first name, the absence of which is always a tip off to soccer greatness. His friends might call him Lionel and he might answer, but to the world and to those who do recognize the offsides trap, he is Messi.

Messi will be coming around here in October to play the Fire. Tickets are in demand, reportedly for as much as $4,000. By then maybe the Messi frenzy will have returned to reason, though the shelf life of these things is unreliable.

Soccer society went a little nuts for Pele as I recall, who may actually be the greatest player ever, but Pele could not save the North American Soccer League, nor could George Best nor Gerd Muller nor Franz Beckenbauer, nor all those relics of former glory.

And yet the formula remains, buy leftovers with name value and sell the merchandise as long as they are remembered.

When David Beckham was tasked with saving Major League Soccer, not his Spice Girl wife, his tattoos nor his ability to bend it like himself were able to keep the promise that came with his arrival.

Beckham, now an owner of Messi's new team, Inter Miami, sees the same future he foresaw as a player in Los Angeles, celebrated when he arrived, ignored when he left.

It is reliably reported that Messi has been scoring lots of goals in the time he has been here, and in that there is proof of his greatness and not evidence of MLS ineptness.

Fool us once, or twice or three times, we will be here for a fourth. Or fifth.