India, Dec. 14 -- A football god in a land of non-believers - that could have been one way of looking at Lionel Messi's short tour of India which devolved into chaos at the Salt Lake stadium 20 minutes after he arrived here on Saturday morning.

For it came at a time when Indian football, the men's club game at least, has been kicked to touch. A time when clubs and the All India Football Federation are locked in a stand-off that has triggered letter bombs after a long court case.

Another way of looking at it would be that Messi supersedes all that. "Football's worth watching if Messi has the ball," Diego Maradona, who, like Messi, had visited Kolkata twice, had said. "He's a unicorn, man - not just for what he does on the field," Don Gar...