Beckham comes to America

So Becks and his skinny missus are coming to America. What has he done?

Once Goldenballs had the most revered right foot in the business and a haircut that would make every young man in the country head down to the nearest barbers. At times he single handedly won games for his country and was the first Premiership player to add real worth the word ‘assist,’ previously an expression used solely in American sports.

Recently he has swanned around Madrid as part of the glorified but generally shite Galacticos gracing the bench of some of the best stadiums in Europe.

However for the small some of $1m a week Becks has forgone the Galacticos for The Galaxy far, far away in Los Angeles, home of people considered to be madder than Neil Warnock!

So the former England captain will exchange the rarified atmosphere of Champions League tussles with thrilling games played in front of 10,000 people at Real Salt Lake, Columbus Crew and Kansas City Wizards.

Afternoons at The Bernabeu will be exchanged for afternoons at the Home Depot Center, the nearest you will get to Selhurst Park with its more popular Sainsbury’s in the car park.

The Home Depot Center I might add is 13 miles from LA in a town called Carson, so more Petts Wood than Hollywood. Beckham announced that he had taken advice from Tom Cruise about moving to LA, which is a bit like asking Vera Duckworth about a move to Manchester.

Beckham’s new management will consist of Alexi Lalas, one of the more famous American ‘soccer’ players outside of the country. The bloke who had a goatee and a ponytail long before Becks made them famous is LA Galaxy’s president and general manager, whilst Frank Yallop is their coach, who will be well known to Ipswich fans and, well that’s about it.

Yallop along with ex-Liverpool ginger nut Steve Nichol and ex-Celtic striker and reformed boozer Maurice Johnston each manage MLS teams. Yallop has twice before won the title with San Jose Earthquakes, who are now in true American franchise fashion called Houston Dynamos and have also been know as The Utah Threesomes and New Orleans Hurricanes. I did actually make the last two up by the way.

Teammates will include ex Coventry player Cobi Jones, who despite being absolutely appalling at Coventry has 164 caps for the US national team! Honest.

Before Beckham’s arrival the most well known ‘soccer’ player in the country was Landon Donovan, who didn’t quite cut it at Bayer Leverkusen and got homesick so came back to LA to be a rather large carp in a small pond.

Galaxy actually share their Home Depot stadium with Club Deportivo Chivas USA (try singing that one to a tune), a sister club to one that graces the Mexican league and draws it support from the huge Mexican immigrant population in south Los Angeles.

LA Galaxy do have the best support in the MLS and even have an official ‘firm’ called the LA Riot squad! And a mascot called Cozmo, a frog like creature apparently, who whips the crowd into a frenzy in between eating burgers and drooling over the cheerleaders.

Who knows what Beckham can add to football in the USA? If he gets American people to at least consider it a sport for grown up men and not for kids or women, then that will be a start even though the media have been lukewarm to his arrival despite being touted as “the best player in the world”
The best corner taker or free-kick specialist or the best sideburns once maybe, but despite Tom Cruise’s help Becks has much to do to raise the profile of the beautiful game in the US. LA has been home to has-beens before, and not just Tom Cruise. A certain George Best played for the LA Aztecs back in the day, when high profile signings bankrupted the NASL, let’s hope we don’t see that again and that old Goldenballs doesn’t suffer that indignity. At least not many people will notice if he does!