Beckham to the L.A. Galaxy
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| David Beckham |
David Beckham is going to America. His time with Real Madrid is over and now he’ll play in the MLS. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, because aging greats (even Pelé himself) have chosen to end their careers in the United States. Not long ago Ronaldo has hinted that he wanted to end his career in the MLS. What knocks me off my feet is the size of the contract. Los Angeles is going to pay Becks $250 million over the course of 5 years. That’s a million dollars a week. Do you feel poor?
Now I know that I don’t normally blog about non-Trini issues here on this blog,and I know I’ve been in a slumber this week but this woke me up. I guess it’s kind of a Trini issue anyway with T&T’s Cornell Glen soon to receive the teammate of his life.
A million dollars a week for 5 years……wow. I’m sorry it’s hard to get past that.
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| Cornell Glen |
Is the US ready for Beks and Posh? I know Becks and Posh have been itching for the bright lights of Hollywood for a long time.
I keep wondering how good a player will he be when there’s not much at stake. His place in the English line up is probably gone forever. There is very little chance of him being signed to another team when he’s 36 years old and his contract with the Galaxy is up so why try to give his best? What’s the incentive to play half as good as he did with Real Madrid and Man U?
Surely a lot of children will take a new interest in football now with David Beckham’s fat paycheck and all, and surely the Galaxy’s attendance will skyrocket by about 500 percent and surely the’ll sell a lot of David Beckham kits, but will it be worth it to the Galaxy?
22 Responses to “Beckham to the L.A. Galaxy”
By No Longer Annon on Jan 12, 2007 | Reply
Boy I nearly shit my pants when I heard that contract offer too. I am not even sure whether he is worth it, and he is definitely no playing to form.
What is Galaxy really getting out of this?
By the way, do you know any non US people who follow the MLS?
I must admit that I myself, on seeing an MLS game, just switch the channel.
I mean I LOVE football, but somehow I am not interested in the American style.
By TriniOne on Jan 12, 2007 | Reply
Mani:
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Galaxy will be paying him that much.
The amount you are hearing includes endorsements etc.
Who cares if he is that good. Beckham is set to be the highest paid player in American sports!
This is beyond huge and it goes to show that you need to GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO PACKAGE and MARKET YOU!!! Ha ha ha.
Beckham is the ‘package’. Adequate skill, fashion conscious, famous wife, no significant controvesy - in other words he is children friendly in a crazy media-hyped world.
To be honest since Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls (sniff sniff) I haven’t watched anything but West Indies cricket and hardly any ’soccer’, I mean football. But, this certainly would make me get into the MLS.
Any thoughts from anyone on how this could increase the payouts for other players as well in the near future? I know there are quite a few Trinis playing in the MLS.
TriniOne
By ttfootball on Jan 12, 2007 | Reply
well I saw this on the TV’s on layover in Miami airport, and I jes laugh and say oh oh its all over for Beckham.
But hear nah, these people have money to dish out yuh know, once they decide they want to try something they make it a big media event. I am a youth coach here, and the audience this is targeted to is not all that aware of his decline in form or his age. Like I said, when I see this I htink “ah boy becks, coming to the MLS mean yuh old and yuh done” but americans still only recognise the big name because they not current with football. I agree with trinione, he is packaged for the US.
Unfortunately i am thinking (although they say attendances have been increasing) whether it will be like the Mia Hamm phenomenon in the W-league: huge attendances only if he is playing and salt the rest of the time.
Mani yuh dont think he is so noble as to try to play well and become a grand motivation and inspiration to all MLS players??
lol
By Mani on Jan 12, 2007 | Reply
No Longer Anon, I don’t know a single person American or not who follows the MLS. I have a friend from Dallas who supports Dallas FC, but he supports any Dallas team and I don’t think he ever watches any of their games. I would watch American football over the MLS any day of the week, lol.
TriniOne, no you are right. That $250 million figure, I found out later is a combination of salary and sponsorship deals, but still man, holy crap! Can you believe it, the highest paid athlete in the US, plays football (soccer)? Surely he could have gone back to the Premiership, but I guess the US is where the money is. I agree with you though, Beks is the total package. I never thought about it like that before. I think americans are going to love him. And advertisers are goign to be clamoring for him. This is definitely a shot in the arm for US football. As regards your questions, I think salaries in the MLS could rise from here on. Maybe at the end of this year Dwight might join Becks in L.A. don’t you think?
TTfootball, well in truth I think the man might still have some gas left in his tank. He’s definitely not too old. He just needs to play better. As I was telling TriniOne, I think he could still get a job in the Premiership. But why just get any old job, when he could come to the MLS and be it’s biggest ever star while he still has some corn on his cob. (Freddy who?) Plus he’s earning a tonne of cash and he and Posh Spice can kick back in the bright lights of Hollywood.
As for whether or not he’ll give 100%, I don’t know, lol. We’ll have to wait and see.
By boysieringo on Jan 12, 2007 | Reply
I hope this drums more US interest in the sport (wishful thinking). Anyways he’ll probably get a few movie deals, a cute horner woman and his wife’s career will be revamped. At a million dollars a week in a league where i think ppl go to retire he surely has brand Beckham on the money.
By Karabana on Jan 13, 2007 | Reply
Pic of Becks, me likey
I confess, I normally don’t read your sports posts, not being a sports fan at all, but I read what you wrote about him. 
By Karabana on Jan 13, 2007 | Reply
oh, & he’d fit in perfectly in the US, they drool over that kind of celebrity (Poshbeck), & he will certainly make the Americans rethink soccer, heck, even get them to start calling it football!
By Dre on Jan 13, 2007 | Reply
Beckham to Own an MLS Soccer Team?
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/1040
“A team could be set up for Beckham at the end of his contract if the league decides to create a new franchise. This has been done before, when the team Chivas USA were formed to appeal to Mexican immigrants.”
Plus he could afford it by then.
Dre
By TriniObserver on Jan 14, 2007 | Reply
1. It’s all about the money. They cannot make it big in terms of earnings–especially his wife–until they make it big in the USA.
MTV and E! still have to explain who these people are every time they do a story about them.
Nobody cares except gay men and staunch Euro-philes.
It’s all about her music career, and a chance to make money the easy way–by looking good.
Hollywood will go gaga over their otherwise lower-class British accents.
2. It takes more humility that Trinidadians can muster to understand that “soccer” and NOT “football” is the most accurate name for the game David Beckham etc plays.
The word “soccer” is NOT an American word–it originated in Britain as an abbreviation for “Association Football” (which is what we play as “standard” today).
You would be surprised to know that Americans are not the only people in the world to have their own type of sport called “football”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_football
Indeed, rugby is also a “football” game.
Who knew the Americans were more accurate than everybody else?
But as I have learned. Never let the facts get in the way of a good America-bashing.
3. Beckham may spark a revolution–we will see. It all depends on how well he plays and how popular they become in Hollywood.
It won’t be sustainable if more international players do not join him forthwith.
By ttfootball on Jan 15, 2007 | Reply
unfortunate how you perceived “soccer” to be an american word, not that its americans mostly that USE it. And while there indeed are other countries that have “football” there is usually some qualifier e.g. australian is called “aussie football” not just football as they say in the US. Interesting how you failed to say that when you click “soccer” on wikipedia, it takes you to the page headed “football” (soccer in brackets)as the world knows football and continues throughout to refer to football as opposed to soccer. I dont think its a case of america-bashing, but of indignation at why americans must refer to the world’s game by a different name than the rest of the world.
By TriniObserver on Jan 15, 2007 | Reply
Given a scenario where you have “American Football” and “football” where the former is infinitely more popular, it is entirely reasonable that somebody was going to be renamed–and very likely the latter.
If you know anything about the reduced profile “soccer” has in the U.S. it’s a wonder it even retained a correct name.
People do things differently in different places. This is just “one of those things”.
They don’t seem to be irritated by it, why should anybody else be?
By TriniObserver on Jan 15, 2007 | Reply
So the point is that it shouldn’t really matter at all–any more than an American “trunk” may be called a “boot”.
By TriniOne on Jan 17, 2007 | Reply
“Association Football” = “Soccer”
Alright. Without doing a Google on this I cyar figure this one out.
I guess it’s like calling someone named “Richard” = “Dick”. Or, what about the all time no sense at all classin - calling someone named “William” = “Bill”.
Call me a prune and a small islander but none of this makes any sense whatsoever.
*TRUE STORY*
While in the US attending university I was receiving calls for months for someone named “William”. You see, my roommate “Bill” was missing important phonecalls until one day I shouted out in frustration that some fool named “William” had given out our number! “Bill” ran to my room was beside himself with emotion and looked at me and said about 10 times - “TriniOne… William… Bill… William…Bill…” My response to him and to this day is “HUH???!!!”
LOL.
Anyway, let’s face facts - America has a super-power level ego and no American will admit that being the only country in the world where football is called by a dweeb-like name, soccer, is just plain wrong and embarassing.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t other top-level US sports like basketball and baseball, and I think hockey have annual ‘World Championships’ AT THEIR INTERNAL LEAGUE LEVEL!!! LOL. Then, when they go to the Olympics and World Championships they often get their arses kicked by some weekend warrior team from Guam! LOL.
Anyway, after all this ranting ah still cyar figure out how “Association Football” = “Soccer”.
TriniOne
By Mani on Jan 17, 2007 | Reply
Dre, I think he could afford it now, lol.
Trinobserver, I’m sorry but I think I’m going to have to disagree with you and instead agree with ttfootball and TriniOne. I hate for football to be called soccer. I think it may be that I am wary of American imperialism in all it’s forms and I think that renaming my sport is another way of their reach extending into our lives. It’s not American bashing at all. We play the sport, and so we’re going to call it what we want and at the same time reserve the right to reject all other names.
I think it’s Americans who bash us. They give football a dweeb-like name (thanks TriniOne) and make fun of us because we play it. I’ve heard all the synonyms for football players including fags and whatever else they call us. Lets be real, football is seen as a weak, faggoty sport in the US. They laugh at the shorts, the laugh at the 1-nil scorelines. So it’s not us doing the bashing, it’s them.
TriniOne, boy roommates does kill each other in the states for thing like that, yuh know. Yuh lucky! lol.
By Mani on Jan 17, 2007 | Reply
Boysie, well I guess that’s the question people want answered, are americans going to start watching football now that Becks is in town. I want to say yes but I can’t be sure.
Karaban, so if I put a pic of Becks next to all my sports posts, will you read them then? Imagine I slaving over these for allyuh and yuh not reading it? lol. Hottie tell meh the same thing.
By TriniObserver on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
No, no, no!
It really doesn’t matter how we “feel” about the word. It is not American–it’s British.
The British have their own abbreviation fetish that’s even more strange than the Americans’.
And my high school principal in Trinidad’s name was Bill and we all knew it was “William”.
The British would say “Wills”.
Now on to soccer:
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordors.htm
Soccer
Soccer is an abbreviation for Association Football. The Football Association was formed in London in October 1863 when representatives of eleven clubs and schools met in an attempt to standardize the rules of the game. One of the rules prohibited the carrying of the ball, a rule that would lead to the Rugby-oriented clubs leaving the Association several months later. The name Association Football was coined to distinguish it from Rugby.
By 1889, the abbreviation socca’ was in use, and the spelling soccer had made its appearance by 1895.
Or from Merriam-Webster:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/soccer
Main Entry: soc·cer
Pronunciation: ’sä-k&r
Function: noun
Etymology: by shortening & alteration from association football
: a game played on a field between two teams of 11 players each with the object to propel a round ball into the opponent’s goal by kicking or by hitting it with any part of the body except the hands and arms — called also association football
http://www.soccer.mistral.co.uk/histwhy.htm
Why the word “soccer”?
We have to thank the students of the 1880s for the word “soccer”. It seems it was the practice amonst the well bred students of Oxford to abbreviate words whilst adding “er” to the end; “brekkers” for breakfast for example.
On asked if he wanted to play “rugger” (i.e. the “rugby rules”) a student replied “no, soccer”, an abbreviation of “association”, or the “association rules”, i.e. the rules of the Football Association in London.
“Footer” was also used, but could have referred to either code.
David Pickering’s “Soccer Companion” (Cassell, 1994) names the student as Charles Wreford Brown, later an England international and F.A. vice-president.
Trinidad and Tobago weren’t even a unitary state back then.
This one is much longer:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pstone/why.html
Stereotypes are sweet, but ultimately unsatisfying. The Americans (gasp!) know exactly what they’re doing.
Yes, many of them think it’s a wimp’s sport, but there’s precious little we can do about that.
All the diving doesn’t help–I’ll tell you that. No, Sir!
By TriniObserver on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
One more link to the etymology of the word:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=soccer&searchmode=none
soccer
1889, socca, later socker (1891), soccer (1895), originally university slang, from a shortened form of Assoc., abbreviation of association in Football Association (as opposed to Rugby football); cf. rugger, but they hardly could have taken the first three letters of Assoc.
Here is what they have to say about the word “football” itself, and its application to the American form of the game:
football
the open-air game, first recorded 1409; forbidden in a Scottish statute of 1424. The first reference to the ball itself is 1486. Figurative sense of “something idly kicked around” is first recorded 1532. Ball-kicking games date back to the Roman legions, at least, but the sport seems to have risen to a national obsession in England, c.1630. Rules first regularized at Cambridge, 1848; soccer (q.v.) split off in 1863. The U.S. style (known to some in England as “stop-start rugby with padding”) evolved gradually 19c.; the first true collegiate game is considered to have been played Nov. 6, 1869, between Princeton and Rutgers, at Rutgers, but the rules there were more like soccer. A rematch at Princeton Nov. 13, with the home team’s rules, was true U.S. football. The earliest recorded application of the word football to this is from 1881.
So there you have it.
By ttfootball on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
I dont really get what all that was for except to help out Trinione bcuz ummm….what century are we in again? Sure it was coined by the british but do THEY even really use it anymore? Like Mani said, its the american imperialism that is annoying. They are one of maybe only 2 or 3 countries that even have “soccer” within the name of their national association. Brits play footy not soccer nowadays, it is after all 2007.
By TriniObserver on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
If they have been calling “soccer” by its correct name since 1890, and their version “football” since 1881, then it’s very unlikely they would re-name it again to keep up with world trends, especially if “soccer” failed to take off in the USA; and especially if their “football” was huge.
What were they to do? Hold a conference and a formal renaming?
It began as “soccer” and it stayed that way.
Sometimes a rose is a rose.
No need to dump all the baggage on them continuously for the rest of all time.
That’s how history works.
We have Standard One, two, three and on and on.
That is an antiquated “Britishism” that they stopped using long before either of us were even born.
Hey, they barely even use “Forms” anymore; but we do.
That’s English for you. It’s dynamic and it changes with time and place.
It’s not the “Illuminati” or anything as sinister. It’s just human beings, culture, time and distance.
By ttfootball on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
…and therefore why should it be unusual for “the rest of us” to feel miffed when americans say soccer and everyone else (almost) says football?
O and in Australia they did have a conference and a formal renaming.
By TriniObserver on Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
Heh…
A “conference” was held alright. That was an “Imperial” move if there ever was one, ironically.
People still call it “soccer” there–and other places around the world. “Everyone else” does not call it “football” exclusively.
That others are “miffed” is another hornet’s nest altogether. Needless to say, nobody instructed them to feel that way.
No matter how it’s dissected it’s still a fluke of history.
By nandi23 on Jan 24, 2007 | Reply
Beckem rude ! I tink he need some mannerizing