The Beckham Fiasco
As a fan of Fútbol, I was excited to hear Golden Balls himself was coming to America. It’s a very rare occurrence to have one of the most recognizable soccer athletes come to the USA towards the end of his prime. The version of David Beckham probably wouldn’t deliver goals from the half field line anymore, but there was going to be some excitement around soccer in the USA by people who weren’t necessarily soccer fans. A bona fide chance for MLS to be viewed as a serious league for once.
Unfortunately, all of the adults were apparently away when the children decided to play and a string of incredibly dumb decisions have lead to a situation that should have never happened in the first place.
If you haven’t been following the press clippings, I’ll summarize:
- Beckham injures ankle in a Euro Cup Qualifier back in May
- Beckham shoots his ankle up with pain killers and God knows what else to play in season finale (title clinching game) for his former club Real Madrid in Spain.
- That injection is later blamed for making the damage worse and having watched the game I don’t think it helped much as Beckham was quite limited in that game.
- Beckham plays on a gimpy ankle in an exhibition against Chelsea and later admits that probably set him back a week
- Beckham plays in NY on Saturday night Aug 18, flies to London Sunday Aug 19, plays the entire game against Germany for England on Wednesday the 22nd, flies back to Los Angeles on Thursday the 23rd and plays another full game against Chivas USA for the LA Galaxy and is noticeably limping at the end of the game.
- Misses the weekend in Colorado for the Galaxy.
- Starts in Super Liga final on Aug 29 and injures his knee. Probably will be out for a lengthy spell.
Any sane person reading these events must realized how insanely ridiculous this was. Beckham shouldn’t have played until his ankle was 100%, but the Galaxy and MLS had pimped his presence so much there was an immense amount of pressure (Beckham included, I’m sure) for Becks to play. I’m sure that seeing all of those packed houses on the road just because he “might” play didn’t make things easier. All that pressure imposed on himself plus all the hype I’m sure made it hard for anyone to force Beckham to sit when he wasn’t ready to play.
I for sure thought I’d be at some Galaxy games this year once I heard Beckham had been signed, but I know for sure now that I won’t be attending any Galaxy games this year. I’m not gonna pay to see a gimpy Beckham perform on the worst team in the MLS. I’ll go next year when he should be fully recovered and hopefully the Galaxy gets a GM that has a clue and/or philosophy on how to put a fútbol team together. What Lalas has done to the Galaxy is a travesty. The turnover leads to unfamiliarity among the players which makes it difficult to create a cohesive unit which is the ultimate goal in a fútbol team. If you look at Lalas’ track record for “building” teams (San Jose, New York “MetroStars”, and now LA Galaxy) you’ll see they’ve never done well under his rule.
So hopefully will sit the rest of this season out and come back next Spring so that America can get a true glimpse of how good he can actually be.
