Beckham and Blanco: Gifts That Never Stop Giving

MLS bounced back this past week­end after sev­eral weeks of the type of unin­spir­ing action that would prompt crit­ics of the league’s qual­ity to claim the US first divi­sion is no bet­ter than League One or Two in Eng­land (The 3^rd and 4^th divi­sions in Eng­land.) While MLS has more qual­ity in the attack than any sec­ond divi­sion in Europe (includ­ing the Eng­lish Cham­pi­onship and Bun­desliga 2 which I con­sider the two best sec­ond divi­sions on the planet) I would argue that the lack of qual­ity defend­ing which is an unin­tended bi-product of the salary cap makes some­times even the most high scor­ing MLS matches totally unwatch­able from a crit­i­cal standpoint.

A great deal of this weekend’s MLS excite­ment and qual­ity were cre­ated by the two biggest sign­ings the league had made this decade, two sign­ings that are unlikely to be repli­cated by the league in the near future. It’s not that MLS is not mak­ing good sign­ings any longer: but to get two play­ers, pos­si­bly the only two play­ers on the planet that can be used to tar­get the most skep­ti­cal poten­tial fans of the league in one cal­en­dar year was beyond any­thing those of us who have fol­lowed this league since year one could have expected.

Since his arrival state­side ten months ago David Beck­ham has never played a ninety minute match like he did on Sat­ur­day night ver­sus Kansas City. It was the Beck­ham many of us expected to see from day one, but the learn­ing curve of a new league as well as injuries and Eng­land call ups pre­vented Beck­ham from truly blos­som­ing with the Galaxy. Beckham’s game was famil­iar to many US based fans but inspite of play­ing for Man­ches­ter United and Real Madrid his true assets as a foot­baller were less known state­side than those of the other great MLS sign­ing a year ago. But Beck­ham appealed to the casual fan and to the sports media who typ­i­cally pays MLS lit­tle or no attention.

Cuauhté­moc Blanco had no learn­ing curve nec­es­sary with regards to MLS. Blanco’s exploits famil­iar to the major­ity of soc­cer fans in the US thanks to his Club Amer­icá and Mex­i­can National Team days, con­tin­ued the moment he touched down in Chicago. He was the sin­gle best player in Chicago’s 1–1 draw with Celtic in Blanco’s first match. His fan­tas­tic play has con­tin­ued with con­sis­tency and it has had a pro­found impact iron­i­cally enough on the devel­op­ment of the US National Team: With the US MNT in my opin­ion at its weak­est point from an attack­ing tal­ent stand­point in fif­teen years (just as Bob Bradley has tran­si­tioned the US from a pure counter attack­ing side to a more aggres­sive team), three attack­ing play­ers have emerged as viable player pool options: Chad Bar­rett, Chris Rolfe and John Thor­ring­ton. Blanco’s sign­ing has also reg­is­tered MLS as being a more cred­i­ble force among the largest base of soc­cer fans in the US: Mexican-Americans and more specif­i­cally among Club Amer­icá sup­port­ers which along with Guadala­jara fans pro­vide the back­bone of US based Mex­i­can fans. One sur­vey I have been made privy too noted that 32% of all Latino soc­cer fans in the US listed Club Amer­icá as their favorite club. Chivas was favored by 31%, Real Madrid by only 7% and Man­ches­ter United did not even register.

 
Beck­ham and Blanco have not only brought MLS to new lev­els among fans and the media, but they have also as I noted above greatly improved the play on the pitch. Lan­don Dono­van seems ready to explode into the player US fans have long expected him to become (even though I would argue even a half inter­ested Dono­van was clearly the best US player: That is both an indict­ment of the over­all foot­balling tal­ent pro­duced in the US and a state­ment as to how spe­cial Dono­van can be when he is really focused.) and even pre­vi­ously mar­ginal play­ers such as Alan Gor­don and Edson Bud­dle are begin­ning to really ben­e­fit from Beckham’s work and Rudd Gullit’s tac­ti­cal savvy. 

As MLS moves for­ward con­tin­u­ing to get solid play from Beck­ham and Blanco are as big a key to the league’s suc­cess and per­cep­tion as any other factor.