LA Galaxy v Chelsea in Three Quotes

A few days before David Beckham was set to play his LA Galaxy debut against Chelsea FC in California, my friend John and his family took a completely unrelated trip to Los Angeles. I hadn’t spoken to him for a couple of days because of their vacation, and suddenly I received a voicemail at work that simply said, “Scott, I have to tell you where I am. This is an urgent message. Call me back.”

I snuck out of the office and returned John’s call. He was difficult to hear. That was because of the crowd at the Galaxy’s home stadium, where he was awaiting David Beckham’s first practice in America. English power-house Chelsea was scheduled to practice afterward and John, a Chelsea fan, was elated. I couldn’t stay on for long, but I told him to call me back later.

He did, and he told me Beckham didn’t do much, just kicking the ball around on the side. He also told me that #23 jerseys were selling fast, and that he missed seeing Chelsea practice because this was an unscheduled stop along the way to meet some friends for dinner.

John’s experience encapsulates the game that these practices lead up to: Beckham didn’t do much because he’s hurt, no one cared and still fawned over him anyway, and the best soccer team present in North America, albeit for a brief visit, was almost completely ignored because people had other things drawing their attention. Along for the ride for Beckham’s greatly anticipated debut, ESPN operated with this attitude. I plucked three quotes from their broadcast of the match that boil down what America saw when it finally laid eyes on David Beckham.

“This is Hollywood, my man.” -Alexi Lalas

Oh, was it ever. Lalas, who you may remember as that guy with the goatee whose guitar Keith Olberman smashed on an early, “This is SportsCenter,” commercial, is now the General Manager of the LA Galaxy, which means he is the point man for all Beckhamania and Beckhamarketing. In his halftime interview with ESPN’s studio crew, Rob Stone and Julie Foudy, Lalas couldn’t have summed up the game any better.

Throughout the telecast, ESPN did not want us to forget that LA is a town full of stars. During the pre-game, Bonnie Bernstein rattled off a list of celebrities from a red carpet placed outside the stadium entrance: Jennifer Love Hewitt! Drew Carey! Kevin Garnett! Alicia Silverstone! There were no actual stars on that red carpet, but Bonnie told us who had been there, or, at least, who was sitting in the stadium somewhere, being famous and pining for Becks. Rob and Julie were amazed, as we all were, at the names of television stars, people who used to be in movies, and the best basketball player plying his trade in the state of Minnesota.

This was only a part of the pre-game programming that made it difficult for casual or avid fans to tell an actual soccer match was going to be played. Before and after every commercial break leading up to kick off, Rob told us that they hadn’t seen Beckham or they still hadn’t seen David Beckham. Rob said once, sounding smitten, that Beckham still hasn’t shown “that beautiful face of his.” It seemed Rob had a bit of a man-crush, and he got antsy, like a guy waiting alone at a table for two whose date has yet to show. She’s not late yet. Really, she’s not. They’re meeting at eight, and it is fifteen till. She’s coming. She is. He sips calmly from his drink and eyes the door. He fiddles with his napkin and explains to the waiter that, ‘no, she’s not here yet, but yes, he’s still waiting.’ That calm can only last so long, and Rob nearly crossed that line when he actually raised his voice. As the camera panned over The Home Depot Center before yet another commercial, the television audience could sense Rob’s face reddening and his veins bulging as he told us, “He’s still not here!”

I’ve never heard a pre-game show specifically talk about the absence of one player so often without profiling the players who would actually take the field, and I should have known this was an indication of what was to come. The soccer was soccer, with Chelsea pushing hard and LA holding fast despite the weight of the game taking place near their goal, but the broadcast was a eerie display that blended a facsimile of a soccer broadcast, which ESPN has done many times before, with the focus on famous lives of E! News.

“This is what US soccer fans have fantasizing about for years.” -Julie Foudy

I’m not so sure about that. The presence of a major international soccer star is certainly something US soccer fans can be proud of. The Madness of David Beckham seems more like the fantasy of agents and marketers, not fans. As the first half finished 0-0, I was in a state of shock, and it wasn’t because LA held Chelsea scoreless for 45 minutes. It was the sheer audacity of the attention to the minutiae of Beckham’s activity that numbed me as an audience member and embarrassed me as an American soccer fan.

From the moment Beckham came out, ESPN’s booth crew, Dave O’Brien, Eric Wynalda, and Tommy Smyth, were relentless with everything but the game. Eric Wynalda gave us a quick analysis of the Galaxy side: “Good lineup.” Tommy Smyth-with-a-Y, the token European, countered by judging Chelsea’s lineup, a team I would judge as top five or even three in the world right now as, “pretty good.” They mentioned Chelsea’s recent success in the English Premier League, their superb African players, and the struggles of Ukrainian striker Andriy Shevchenko. But, throughout the evening, they spent more airtime gushing about such sporting subjects as Victoria Beckham’s sunglasses and champagne, Shevchenko’s wife (a model originally from Los Angeles), and David Beckham’s specially-made shoes.

To say the cameras cut away from the game to show us Victoria and her friends, Katie Holmes and Eva Longoria, often would be a gross understatement. We saw Posh six times during the first half. Of a soccer game.

Aside from Posh, cameras often cut away to Bonnie Bernstein, now freed from the lonely red carpet to rove about the stands and find famous people to interview. We found out that Jennifer Love Hewitt is new to all of this, ‘that she got into soccer because of a guy,’ and she’s loving it. Drew Carey, an actual soccer fan, interrupted his answers and looked away more than once to watch Chelsea move in on the LA goal. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there, and Bonnie asked The Governator about playing soccer as a boy in Austria (Eric Wynalda prefaced the interview with the fact that Arnold must like soccer because he’s Austrian).

Closer to the field, but still outside the realm of actual game activity, was the Beckham Cam. It was actually labeled that. Randomly, the screen would split and the lower-right would show its subject sitting on the bench. Wynalda, who I expected to be the eye of calm and reason in the hurricane that is Beckham coverage, updated us when Beckham adjusted his shoes. Eric also pointed out that Beckham, “is the only guy leaning forward on the bench… That’s got to mean something.” It was true. Every time the Beckham Cam popped up in the first half, he was on the bench and he was leaning, enthralling us all.

We watched Beckham sit. We watched him raise his arm in response to fouls or to protest a deft attempt by Chelsea’s Ivorian striker Didier Drogba, the runner-up for Player of the Year in the EPL last season, at a slick handball. We watched Beckham sit again, until an update-The Latest From Sideline Reporter Allen Hopkins-told us that Beckham would be getting up and moving soon. After that, we watched Beckham warm up. Beckham jogged, and Beckham did a little hop-back-and-forth move that warming-up soccer players do. The crowd was euphoric. He’s magical. He can do it all. Then, Beckham broke off from some stretching to tap a stray ball back onto the field. Dave O’Brien announced, “Beckham’s first touch,” and Tommy Smyth seemed pleased that, “we documented it.” Soon after, the latest from Allen Hopkins tells us that Beckham’s ankle tape is too tight, possibly, so we should remain calm while the camera showed Beckham running back into the locker room.

Dave, Eric, and Tommy talked about how promising it is to see Beckham running. He sprained an ankle, but the intensity of their discussion was like a hospital watch for an accident victim in a coma. After Beckham returned to the field, O’Brien compared Beckham’s imminent introduction into the game to Willis Reed with the Knicks in 1970. Sure, Dave. David Beckham’s sprained ankle in an exhibition MLS match in Carson, California is the much like, if not exactly the same as Willis Reed’s torn thigh in Game 7 of the NBA Finals in Madison Square Garden against the Lakers. I can’t see it any other way.

“Soccer’s time has come!” -Dick’s Sporting Goods Commercial

Around the 76th minute, the latest from Allen Hopkins tells us that Beckham will be entering soon. Wynalda excitedly tells Beckham to, “just take it-take that, just take that sweatshirt off!” Alan Gordon had the good fortune of becoming the answer to a trivia question as he came off to be replaced by Beckham. While O’Brien told us that, “the Beckham Era has begun at last,” my wife mocked the graphic at the bottom of the screen that graciously informed us that this is David Beckham’s first appearance with the LA Galaxy.

He only played about fifteen minutes, but in terms of soccer, Beckham did show US soccer fans something. He made an excellent sixty-yard pass (proof of Wynalda’s earlier claim that Beckham can “put it on a striker’s eyebrow”). He took a nasty spill at an ankle-busting tackle by Steve Sidwell (a young Chelsea sub who must not have understood manager Jose Mourinho’s planned policy of no aggression toward Beckham), rolled over a mild amount for a soccer player, and then hopped back up, grimacing but still playing. He took a corner kick, which the LA crowd had been chanting for, instead of Landon Donovan, who placed the ball and jogged away, smiling and slapping Beckham’s hand as they passed. It wasn’t enough to even muster a draw, but it appeared that Beckham was there to play soccer, not to be surrounded by media that, from the aerial view inside the stadium, looked like teeming bacteria under a microscope. He was the center of what Rob had called the, “David Beckham love-fest,” but he wasn’t mugging for cameras, separating himself from his team, or dogging it on the field.

That makes me feel better as a US soccer fan. The maniacal coverage that we saw in Beckham’s exhibition debut, a match with absolutely no consequence to either side, will hopefully subside, allowing the sport to be precisely what it is; a sport.

The Dick’s Sporting Goods commercial announced over and over that soccer is finally here. Soccer’s time will not arrive because of one famous Englishman who will not, as Lalas cautioned, “score five goals a game.” Sure, Wayne Gretzky told ESPN’s cameras that his kids want to meet Beckham, and Rob Stone’s wife called to make sure she gets a Beckham jersey, but Beckham is not soccer and US soccer fans are not salivating over famous haircuts, huge sunglasses, headlines about $22 million houses, and famous Scientologist friends.

Soccer’s time will come when people watch soccer for what the game is, as they do for the World Series, the NFL, and March Madness. I don’t know how long that will take, but watch for this indicator: when people talk less about Posh sitting with Eva and Katie and more about plays like the lost moment in this match that was most indicative of soccer’s creative, free-flowing, spontaneous, team-oriented nature. It happened around the 52nd minute, a brilliant sequence of passing and cutting, a multi-layer give-and-go between Chelsea’s world-class attacking players.

They moved seamlessly, first Shevchenko to Salomon Kalou, then a return pass that Shevchenko let through to Drogba in order to slip past the last Galaxy defender and receive the ball back again from Drogba, Shevchenko then drawing the goalkeeper and touching a pass to Drogba in front of an empty net.

Those who watched the game not only for Beckham, but for soccer, will remember this play despite the fact that a) Shevchenko was rightly called offside by mere inches, negating the fantastic goal from counting and subsequently disqualifying it from making number one or two on SportsCenter’s Top Ten, and b) Beckham was not involved. Those who didn’t watch the game will most likely never see this interchange because of the offside penalty. They will have to wait until soccer’s time actually comes, not just when we are told by a poorly conceived and executed commercial that it has arrived.