The title says it all - David Beckham is moving to L.A. to play footie for the L.A. Galaxy for 250 million dollar contract…I wonder what the Britons think of this, or footie lovers worldwide… Personally, Beckham isn’t an american institution as he is in other parts of the world…
How about you?
Suck why? And what do the Britons have to be pissed about? He’s already playing abroad!
Spanish newspapers are making jokes along the lines of “Beckie Goes to Hollywood” and “changing galaxies”. My local Spanish newspaper says he’d been getting very little playtime with the current coach and he has a soccer school in LA. My Real Madrid fan friend is kind of pissed at the coach, but if he wasn’t kind of pissed at the coach for this it would be for something else, criticising el míster is a sport unto itself.
Figo moving to Real Madrid from Barça made muuuuuch bigger waves than this!
I can’t imagine Americans being interested enough in Beckham to go to games or buy much in the way of merchandise.
Pele didn’t save professional soccer in America, neither will Beckham.
David Beckham is past his prime, to say the least. He’s agreed to play for the Galaxy until he’s 46, which is tragic because the Galaxy are bad enough already. So is the rest of the MLS, and splurging on pretty-boy ex-playmakers won’t change that. Didn’t the NASL prove that already? Sign Xavi (hell, Peter Crouch) and I’ll be impressed. I’m going to watch just as many Galaxy games this year as I did last year and the year before: zero.
That said, I hope for the sake of American soccer that this brings enough attention and interest to spur on serious changes. IMO what the American game needs is a cultural 180: young phenoms are pushed by their parents, coaches, etc. to shoot for college scholarships and then forget about soccer once they’ve got their degrees. If the kids start dreaming about playing for their local club and the national team–the way young soccer players do everywhere else in the world, and the way young basketball players do here–we’ll be ready to become a serious contender on the world stage and earn a top 5 ranking that isn’t a typo*. Again I hope David Beckham can help us get there–but I sincerely doubt he can do it alone. Pele couldn’t. He couldn’t do it with the help of a bevy of internationals, either, because the NASL was plagued by bad TV coverage, too-rapid expansion, lack of an effective domestic talent development system, and too much of an emphasis on quick fixes. Though the MLS’s quick fixes are different from the NASL’s–subsidized soccer-only stadiums instead of drastic rule changes–I see all the same factors at play in the modern league.
Man, I hope I’m wrong.
*Come on, how else do you explain that?
To use an analogy, what would Americans think if an NFL Europe gave Brett Favre a $250 million contract?
Most would scratch their heads and say, “What? Well, if Brett can find someone willing to pay that kind of money, good for him! But the team has to be crazy! I mean, the guy WAS great in his prime, but he’s way past his prime now, and even at his peak, he wasn’t worth $250 million. Besides, Europeans don’t care about American football, and most have only a vague idea (if that!) who Brett Favre is. Just how much of a box office draw do they think he’s going to be???”
Now, soccer is slightly more popular in the USA than American football is in Europe, and most Americans have heard of David Beckham… but more for his famous wife and his appearances in gossip columns than for anything he’s done on the field.
I can’t see how it makes business sense for an American team to pay him so much… unless the contract has a lot of loopholes and incentive clauses that mean he won’t really collect all of that money.
This isn’t the first time I’ve worried that MLS teams have an inflated and unrealistic idea of their spending power. Again, for the sake of American soccer I hope against the odds that this works. I don’t know how many more failed leagues the game can take in this country.
Beckham is certainly past his best, though he was recently England captain and is a hard-working professional.
He is probably the most famous current football player, so there will be merchandising spin-offs.
As I understand US sport, American Football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey have pretty much sewn up the TV money. Soccer may be very popular amongst youngsters, but it needs a shrewd marketing person to break the stranglehold of the big 4.
Bit of a hijack in case you’re curious…
There’s no TV money in hockey anymore. Correction: There’s no money at all in hockey anymore. Shame if you ask me, but it’s almost impossible to catch hockey on TV here, especially if you don’t have cable or satellite. NBC starts showing a game every Saturday morning in the second half of the season; otherwise you can get a game or two a week on Versus (a cable channel) and then you might get the nearest team’s games on the regional Fox Sports Net (also cable). This is in stark contrast to football, where every Sunday you see two whole games and parts of several others on CBS, two whole games and parts of several others on Fox, and a “game of the week” type game on NBC. Not counting Monday Night Football on ESPN (which has really gone downhill IMO) and the new Thursday night game on the NFL network, not to mention the 40 bazillion college games you can get every Saturday on seemingly every channel except Lifetime.
Anyway, to make a long story short, you’re absolutely right. The ESPN/ABC/Disney empire is throwing a lot of money and thought into pushing soccer into the American TV market. They made some progress in the last two World Cups IMO, though I was a little disappointed that they didn’t capitalize on the growing popularity here of the World Cup to bolster MLS ratings.
I was being sarcastic… 
Most of the money is coming from endorsements. The team is only paying him about $50 million over 5 years, not $250.
Only 50 million - my heart bleeds :rolleyes:
Reportedly, the Galaxy sold 3000 season tickets the day of the announcement (this article mentions 2000 in the first few hours).
They’re welcome to him. He’s a mediocre player anyway, has achieved little at Real Madrid.
What’s the point exactly? Does the LA Galaxy team and American soccer think that Beckham will attract fans to the sport? If so how? Most American have no idea who Beckham is.
Well, I know who he is.
He’ll do alright if they get the the team to play into his strengths.
I’d disagree with that - I think a lot of people know who he is - he’s married to Posh Spice for God’s sake. Although, sadly, I think a lot of people would be hard pressed to name a single member of the U.S. Soccer Team or a single MLS player.
Anyways - you just have to look at the ticket sales/requests to see that he’s ALREADY generating interest. I just read an article that said that the Toronto MLS team had 500 calls the day of the announcement from people interested in “Beckham tickets.” Add that to the interest noted above with thousands of tickets sold on the day of the announcement in L.A.
Also - anecdotally - I’m a big soccer fan, but honestly, I really just watch the English footie and an occasional friendly when England or the U.S. is playing. (Or the World Cup - I watched about 60 of the games this time around… Woohoo!) Since this announcement, I’ve already resolved to make it out to an MLS game to watch Becks in person.
So that’s one! I think it’s a brilliant move - and by God, I think they ought to try to pull more names in with big deals. Lehman’s getting old
Gak - cut off short! I was going to say Lehman’s getting old, but he’s the type of bigger name player - like Becks - that MLS needs to start pulling in to generate more interest.
Eventually they’ll land a younger supertalent and then it’s off to the races.
American soccer has been there and done that. Back when I was a teenager, the old NASL paid a fortune to bring in washed-up former superstars like Pele, Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer. The NASL ended up folding a few years later.
Beckham was never as great a player as they were on the field, but he has much more celebrity value than any of them. So, as a publicity stunt, this may work for a while. But there’s a big problem. See, people who know little or nothing about soccer (i.e. most Americans) probably think Beckham is some kind of scoring machine. Even at the height of his prowess, he was NEVER a huge scorer.
So, any Americans who buy tickets to a Galaxy game to see Beckham will probably be EXTREMELY disappointed when the end result is a typical 1-0 game in which Beckham never comes close to scoring a goal (even if Beckham does a hundred important little things).
This should be amusing - At least he and Posh ill have their privacy. Short of being approached outside the stadium I think the Beckhams will finally be able to shop and dine in peace.
David who…?
How long before the pair of them are converted to Scientology by their new best friend Tom Cruise ? Mind you, probably neither of them will be able to spell the word.