“A global sports icon who will transcend the sport of soccer in America and carry it on his shoulders.”

Not so fast commish.

Well, in other futbol news, Beck’s 5-year plan to save Major League Soccer looks to be over after only 17 months. This time, he really means it. No, really. Like, Favre is retiring mean it. LA Galaxy fans, he hardly knew yee. Preferring to play in Italy and then for England’s national team—the one he was too washed-up too play in—Mr. Posh just screwed MLS. Again.

But it’s not his fault people hate soccer here.

Although, it’s just as much the fault of MLS in relying on star power alone. Realizing that I’m speaking Russian to NFL fans, I won’t go off too much on all the problems with soccer gaining audience here, suffice it to say, merch alone won’t sell any sport, and neither will star athletes.

Sure he nearly sold out Giants Stadium in his debut two years ago with 66,000+ fans showing up, but when he played there a second time this past summer, attendance dropped by a full third. Even with the draw of a double-header against FC Barcelona. Royalty doesn’t help either.

Pele, the original Beckham in that he was also brought over with the hope of building a league, was only able to fill less than half the stadium for their inaugural home-opener in 2006, a game I was at.

That’s with Franz Beckenbauer, Shakira, Wyclef Jean and Chris brown’s favorite punching bag Rihanna opening the show too. (Pele, big deal, right? It should be. Imagine the Staples Center being only half-full for Magic Johnson Day.)

Did he even help the LA Galaxy? They averaged 26,000 last year per game—with and without him in the lineup. They were also under .500 with him playing. The attendance thing is important for the sport in that it looks better on TV from a fan POV to see a stadium nearly full.

(Their Home Depot Center is a soccer-only stadium with about 27,000 capacity. Giants stadium on the other hand is a concrete eyesore holding 72,000+ with the Red Bulls averaging just under 16,000.)

Pretty obscene in for a sports-crazy town, but not for an apathetic soccer country.

It’s what I call the sixth sport in this country, right behind the NFL, MLB, the NBA, the PGA and the NHL. It’s hard to compete for a share of that attention span, let alone get serious TV coverage beyond World Cup matches. (This is for a host of other cultural reasons best left for another post.)

While you might be inclined to say stars do draw, soccer doesn’t have enough of them and the other leagues here already have too many. Transcendent stars, not Freddy Adu or Landon Donovan, but global names like Beckham. Not enough of those dudes want to play here. Why?

Look at other pro sports here and how we view the way the rest of the world plays them. The NBA has seen hoops develop throughout the world and knows it’s still the NBA and everyone else. Japan and baseball? Whatever.

This is soccer’s problem here. Yes we’re getting better, but everyone else in the world still plays the game on a level or two above us. Too many countries look down on the American game.

(Even though some great individual American-born players go overseas and play with respected clubs/leagues, that’s not the same thing. That’s like saying we’re going to start respecting the Polish National Football League because Sebastian Janikowski can kick the shit out of a football for the Oakland Raiders. Ain’t gonna happen.)

Fans of the other sports here don’t care about it either because they know what we really dominate in, and soccer isn’t on that list. The other five sports got there in our collective consciousness first, (again, for many reasons).

Until Italy’s baseball team and Yemen’s football teams can beat the Yankees and Cowboys respectively, nobody will care about soccer.

(Btw, note to Becks: They don’t have cheerleaders like that in Italy mate.)