May 25, 2012
  • 3/4/09

    soccer

    By Max J. Dickstein

    The Equalizer: Wins weren’t David Beckham’s U.S. priority with the Los Angeles Galaxy

    Photo credit: Game Face

    David Beckham with the L.A. Galaxy, Photo by Getty

    By Andrew Keh

    amNewYork Soccer Columnist

    By nature, there should not be many win-win situations in sports.

    But in a deal that has been portrayed as beneficial for each side, Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy and Italy’s AC Milan have agreed to a “time-sharing” agreement for the midfielder David Beckham, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The Englishman will reportedly stay in Milan past the end of the Serie A season on May 31.

    Beckham would return to L.A. in July, 17 games into the 30-match season.

    The deal could be finalized this week, allowing AC Milan to keep its new star for a few more weeks and likely sign him permanently next winter. For its sacrifice, the Galaxy gets its man for one more summer, plus a hefty, as-yet-unreported payment.

    Still, the big surprise to Galaxy executives, whose brains seem nestled inside their money clips, could be that there will in fact be losers in this transaction — namely the Galaxy fans, the Galaxy players and, well, the Galaxy.

    The club has failed to reach the playoffs the past two years with Beckham. This is an incredible fact considering that the Galaxy made the playoffs in every other year of the league’s existence and, moreover, it was extremely easy to reach the MLS postseason, with eight spots for 14 teams. For those observers who have labeled America’s “Beckham Experiment” a failure, this is their most cogent evidence.

    But with Beckham, winning and losing sometimes seems beside the point. The noble, save-the-children rhetoric of his arrival in 2007 curiously left out any talk of winning a championship, and the way he beamed after a 5-4 loss to the Red Bulls in front of 66,237 fans at Giants stadium that summer spoke volumes about his tepid emotional investment in the team’s success.In all other respects, his stay here has been a success. He raised the profile of soccer and the league, increased attendance around the country as much as one man can and opened the door to MLS for stars such as Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Juan Pablo Angel.

    The problem at the heart of this situation is that there is still a game to be played and won or lost.

    Beckham, skilled as he is, plays the game of a specialist, and unlike Chicago’s Blanco or the Red Bulls’ Angel, he rarely decides a match. From a team-building standpoint, he is not an ideal designated player for a cash-strapped club.

    The MLS and its supporters often speak about garnering respect around the world. But it is hard to respect a franchise that disregards winning, which, despite the cliches, is what the game is all about.

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