Becks has been dealing with an ankle injury for the last few weeks, which inevitably earned the condemnation of journalists quick to call him a wimp despite the fact that more than one of the games was a glorified exhibition, and that we in the US are in the midst of the inanely long NFL preseason when players will miss practices and exhibition games at the drop of a hat. Well, Beckham saw his first substantial action last night in a Superliga game (which matches teams from Mexico's pro league and the MLS) and hopefully he shut his detractors up for a while, scoring one of his patented free kick goals and handing out an assist in a 2-0 Galaxy victory over DC United.
David Beckham is not going to save soccer in the United States. I'm not certain that it needs saving. And I actually think that MLS might now be our fourth major team sports league, despite the fact that it is a second-rate professional soccer league by global standards. But he has been a wonderful player (even if limited in many ways, and even if his fame surpasses his still considerable abilities as a player) for a long time and Americans are lucky to have him in our professional ranks. It is easy to overstate the Beckham effect, but it is, as recent behavior from our supposed sports experts reveals, even easier to mock and understate what we don't understand. Beckham won't do what he did last night every time out. But he has now shown why the Galaxy wanted him to cross the pond and join our sporting firmament. Let's just allow him to play. And let's enjoy it when he does.
1 comment:
I'd call soccer our top minor team sport rather than our fourth major team sport. Clearly there are only 3 major team sports in the US now. And though I do think you are right in that American reporters have taken cheap shots at soccer throughout this, I have to think that it is in some part a response to the attitude of the soccer loving crowd in the US. I hear "the rest of the world loves this game, it just shows that Americans are idiots and don't understand the beauty of the game" a lot more often than "we're increasing the talent level in US, just give it a chance from time to time and see if you eventually get hooked." I played soccer through high school. I love the sport and watch hours upon hours of world cup coverage, but with pro and college football, pro and college basketball and baseball, I just don't have room for more sports in my life outside of popping in for a major in golf or a Federer/Nadal matchup in a grand slam final. In the words of Homer Simpson, "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand."
I do sympathize with Beckham--if he's hurt, he's hurt and he can't play. That said, soccer gets very brief windows to showcase itself in this country. Outside of the world cup, the only real big soccer news in the US the past 10 years was when Freddy Adu came on the scene. I made time to sit down and watch his first game and MLS botched that when his team didn't even start him. So it's kind of a bummer as to how this Beckham thing turned out because I was ready to sit down and watch that first game he was going to play in but when it became "maybe he will play, maybe he won't", I'm stopped making time to watch that. Soccer had a golden moment here where there was nothing on the sports calendar. Baseball was in the late July/early August downtime and football was in training camps with preseason games not even starting. Had Beckham done what he did last night in that first much publicized game that he didn't play in (or played very little in), it would have been a step for a soccer. Not a big one, but at least a step. They had a moment where the sports world was focused on him. Instead, he scored a goal and got an assist in a game that wasn't even on TV and it was largely an afterthought on the sports scene that night. I think Beckham will provide a boost to US Soccer--there are a bunch of soccer loving friends I have that don't follow the MLS, but love English Premiere League, that are now going to at least go to an MLS game because they want to see him, but I think it's much more likely that those people stop showing up over the next two years than we see a growing number of people going to see soccer. It stood a better chance of being the other way if Beckham hadn't been hurt when he came over here and played in that first game and did what he did this week.
I also wonder if we'll see the backlash against him before too long. He and his wife love to play up the celebrity and when celebrities become too overexposed, we eventually get sick of them and start tearing them down. I'm already starting to get a bit sick of his wife. I wonder if these two turn into a sideshow before too long and Beckham's presence, like that of Brittany, Lindsay Lohen and Tom Cruise's, does more harm than good in the coming months.
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