BUNB

Argentina scored in the sixth minute of its 1-0 World Cup opening match victory over Nigeria last Saturday. In that stretch of time, the Argentine Lionel Messi, the game’s greatest player, had already led his team to nearly striking soccer gold three times. Argentina dominated the match up to that point, and it dominated it for the 84 minutes that followed as well. And not only on the pitch. Its coach, Diego Maradona, one of the greatest players ever, ran after the ball when it bounced out of play almost as eagerly as Messi did when it was in play. So much fanfare had been made about how Maradona’s team and Messi himself would perform, and neither disappointed. Yet somehow that wasn’t what anyone was talking about after the game. They were talking about 27-year-old Vincent Enyeama, Nigeria’s goalkeeper, who breathtakingly stopped Messi four times and single-handedly kept his team in the game and the hopes of his nation alive.