I don’t like this desperate move. Didn’t Major League Soccer learn anything from MLB’s 10-year, $250 million A-Rod mess? Guess not because Becks will now get the same for five years. This will not help the game of soccer here. Promote the up and coming Landon Donovans, the Freddy Adieus, not overpaid aging players. Four things about this move:1. Jacks up prices for a family sport which is already getting too costly relative to the other major pro sports in this country.
2. Posh now replaces Nicole Ritchie and Lindsay Lohan as the anorexic flavor of the month on the LA party scene.
3. England’s hero will be wearing a bull’s eye as every MLS also-ran player will now be gunning for him. He’s not beloved like a Gretsky or a Jordan where he’ll command respect and have someone watching his back. Every player with a lousy contract will have something to prove against him.
4. The Geico Gekko. Have you heard Beckham in interviews? That’s what he sounds like. This little Cockney voice: “See, yeah, they paid me all this money yeah, and all I have to do is look pretty, yeah?”
Tags: MLS, David Beckham, LA Galaxy
5 comments:
Oh boy, are you guys going to have fun with the Beckhams.
The good Mrs FNC has a major crush on Becks (buying her a Beckham calendar was a good move at Xmas), but if he's ever interviewed, the Love God fantasy only works if the volume is turned to zero.
99% of his intelligence is concentrated in his big toe.
Mrs Becks was the one who was always pointing in the Spice Girls videos.
Wait - we have soccer in this country?
News to me. I thought it was only played by suburban white kids whose Moms don't want them getting hurt playing real football.
(I hear the groans of our Brit friends.)
But some "PR Guru" named Max Clifford puts it nicely.
Clifford said: "Football is not big in America, David Beckham is not big in America - football does not mean much.
"This is a new challenge, but Pele and George Best could not manage it."
But still a smart move for Beckham the Gecko. $200 million and the chance to live on the front pages of the tabloids bigger than ever.
Prediction: No one will give a rat's ass in America. Just like the rest of the world doesn't care for our national pastimes.
jp - I agree, sadly. Freaking NASCAR will do as much to kill soccer in this country as a spectator sport as anything.
MLS had a chance to do more for the league by NOT signing this guy for 250 (of which a lot will be existing endorsements), still...
This is that weird thing akin to the NFL coach who thinks he can fix TO when all others before him failed. “If we only bring in a superstar, we can raise major interest in our league.”
MLS was pushing itself as a sport for your country in effect, because they know a lot of the fans root for individual players, be they from Central America, Mexico or elsewhere. That's like Pepsi only going after African American consumers who drink it.
They're not pushing this is as an American sport. Now while this may selectively generate interest among the diverse Hispanic fan base, where's the focus on this being a sport for ALL of America?
The NFL is American mister. The NBA, while now nothing more than run ’n gun streetball, is still American. Baseball? America's pastime. Hockey? Now there's a sport that has at it's core as diverse a player and fan base in terms of nationality, but it's still first and foremost a national American sport.
If I was going to pitch the international thing, then I would go after those crossover artists who are big in other countries and as well as here and get them to promote it. The NFL, MLB and NBA each do this very well, but for American audiences only.
I can't say soccer doesn't have an identity right now, it's just that it has the wrong one. It needs to be an American identity first, not an international one.
They had a good thing going with the MISL (Indoor) a few years back. Now with only 8 teams in the league, it's apparently dying. I saw a few games years ago in San Diego, and for a non-soccer fan, it had everything I needed as an American who grew up on football and basketball. Fast action, high scoring, and playing off the glass walls of the arena.
Europeans, UKers, South Americans and the rest of the world don't get why we don't enjoy their sport. Simply...it's slow, low scoring...and no one gets hurt really really badly. (NASCAR's appeal.)
In short, we are spoiled, violent and have short attention spans. And we're proud of that!
YOur last points about the action thing, see, that goes to something else I think hurts the sport. TV doesn't know how to cover it. Long shots = no good.
Watching the one-on-one action close up, you see a lot of skill and great moves. And that usually happens along the sidelines as players fight to keep the ball in. But instead, we have giant sideboards that block camera view.
They acutally need cameras inside the wall like the NFL has overhead to at least get people closer to the action.
Greenstreet Hooligans, (while a hard-to-believe role for Elijah Wood - imagine Michael J. Fox in Fight Club.), has one sequence filmed during a match which, if MLS could capture action that way, would go a long way to improving coverage.
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