Like so many Americans, I’ve come relatively late to the game of soccer. In my youth, baseball, football, and basketball were the sports that counted. Hockey began to make some inroads in the mid-1950s at which time Rochester became a member of the American Hockey League. My uncle pointed out the irony that the team was called the Rochester Americans even though all the players were Canadian.

Of course, soccer presents its own curiosities. Unlike football, a game played largely with one’s hands, soccer is played almost entirely with the foot. Which fact leads inevitably to the revelation that “soccer” is, logically enough, called “football” in most countries. To be clear, there is a history to the origins of our use of the name “soccer” for the game that most of the world calls “football.” But that history is, at best, mildly interesting. You can google it if you want to be the hit at your next soccer watch party.

The old-timers in my childhood neighborhood were pretty much all Italian immigrants or the children of such. Even though Italians are supposedly passionate about soccer, the goombahs at Edgerton Park seemed a lot more interested in rolling bocce balls than kicking soccer balls. There was a........

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