OPINION: Beckham’s LA Experience Turning Sour

My excite­ment about David Beck­ham sign­ing to play in MLS in Jan­u­ary quickly sub­sided when I real­ized what club he was going to be play­ing with. Sadly the fears I had about the LA Galaxy which led me to pen this blog in May have been con­firmed. Alexi Lalas’ ter­ri­ble record of club man­age­ment which saw him destroy a cham­pi­onship team in San Jose, fire the future national team man­ager in New York and fire the for­mer national team and MLS cup win­ning coach in Los Ange­les have con­tin­ued. Lalas’ pre Beck­ham arrival moves of trad­ing goal scor­ing threat Nate Jaqua to Hous­ton for Kelly Gray and Rob­bie Find­ley (who has played very well for Real Salt Lake) along with Nathan Stur­gis (who had a big sum­mer with the USU-20 team) for Chris Klein, the sign­ing of an obvi­ously washed up Car­los Pavon and releas­ing of San­tino Quar­anta have fur­ther under­mined the squad which had already been gut­ted by Lalas’ med­dling. Since Lalas took over as Gen­eral Man­ager the Galaxy have traded or released Pablo Nagu­mura, Her­culez Gomez, Ugo Imehlu, Nate Jaqua, Joseph Ngwenya, Rob­bie Find­ley, Nathan Stur­gis, San­tino Quar­anta, and T&T World Cup vet­eran Cor­nell Glen. Each and every one of the play­ers named with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Imehlu would be an upgrade over the player cur­rently play­ing the same posi­tion with the Galaxy. Alexi Lalas maybe a gifted at pub­lic rela­tions for the sport, but his obvi­ous inabil­ity to appre­ci­ate and hold tal­ent have been painfully obvi­ous wher­ever he has worked.

The fact that Beck­ham has played only twenty min­utes of league action in three matches is just as well. I can think of noth­ing more humil­i­at­ing for one of the great foot­ballers and foot­ball ambas­sadors of our time than to be thrown to the wolves with such a clearly out­classed bunch of team mates. Lan­don Dono­van and Abel Xavier notwith­stand­ing, it is tough to find any qual­ity in the Galaxy field play­ers com­pa­ra­ble to the teams they will be com­pet­ing with to make the MLS play­offs. With such a large invest­ment rid­ing on Beck­ham being fit and play­ing in the play­offs, had it ever occurred to Lalas or the Galaxy that med­dling with the squad too much would destroy what­ever chem­istry and con­ti­nu­ity the team pre­vi­ously had. This after all is a club that won the US Soc­cer “dou­ble” (The US Open Cup and MLS Cup) the sea­son before Lalas became the boss. Since they have failed to make the play­offs for the first time in fran­chise his­tory and are now poised to repeat that feat this season.

David Beck­ham deserves bet­ter. Per­haps as his Real Madrid days ended, he was as igno­rant as to the qual­ity of both MLS (which is bet­ter than many give it credit for) and the poor qual­ity of his future side as the Euro­pean media. A player of his stature sit­ting help­lessly on bench gloomy look­ing at his out­fit being absolutely out­classed even by an expan­sion team (Toronto FC) and essen­tially taken to the wood­shed by two of MLS’ bet­ter sides (DC United and New Eng­land). One thing peo­ple for­get about Beck­ham is that he has always been sur­rounded by supe­rior tal­ent which has allowed him to play his role to per­fec­tion with his pre­vi­ous clubs. In Galaxy, he joins a club which is arguably the worst in MLS, whose lack of con­ti­nu­ity and under­stand­ing of one another is painfully obvi­ous when­ever they play. MLS’ qual­ity is not as poor as many believe, which is why the Galaxy’s plight is worse than many real­ize. This club has almost noth­ing going for it on the pitch and looks as if it has a bunch of play­ers who show no urgency or inter­est in the sit­u­a­tion at hand. That par­tially changed for twenty min­utes at RFK Sta­dium when Beck­ham entered that match, but last night the Galaxy despite being down a goal could not mount any­thing in the way of a chal­lenge to New England’s supe­ri­or­ity the entire sec­ond half.

Major League Soc­cer has ben­e­fited from David Beckham’s arrival state­side. But from Beckham’s per­spec­tive the expe­ri­ence must be a sour one. He had no idea what he was get­ting him­self into when he signed with such a poorly run club. With upcom­ing trips to Red Bull New York, Colum­bus, Hous­ton and Kansas City on the docket, one must won­der how much more humil­i­a­tion the great player that is David Beck­ham will be able to take. In each of those matches the Galaxy would have to be con­sid­ered a major under­dog. I have to believe Beck­ham when it’s all said and done will either want out of L.A. or will want to build the squad him­self, bring­ing in his own front office staff. (I’m not sure AEG will per­mit this, but may have lit­tle choice) If he requests a trans­fer, let’s hope Major League Soc­cer can step up and keep him in the league by mov­ing him to a more com­pet­i­tive team, a team that plays for tro­phies and is in FIFA sanc­tioned inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions. (While we don’t have the Cham­pi­ons League in North Amer­ica, we do have the Cham­pi­ons Cup and Copa Sudamer­i­cana, two events that top MLS clubs par­tic­i­pate in). Oth­er­wise Beck­ham could be head­ing back to Europe to fin­ish out his career before you know it, and his entire LA expe­ri­ence will serve to under­mine the cred­i­bil­ity of MLS abroad.