Dude is a soccer player.
It doesn't matter how good he is, or how good looking he or his wife is. Dude plays soccer, and in the American sports pantheon, soccer falls behind the likes of trick-shot billiards, sudoku, and inter-species competitions such as seeing if 44 little people can pull an airplane faster than an elephant.
He could be the greatest soccer player in history (which he isn't, he doesn't even start for his current club, Real Madrid) and it would not matter. People will still disrespect soccer and all who play it. Not to mention, he kinda sounds like he should be in a Lucky Charms commercial. For his own sake, I hope this soccer thing will pass quickly and before long he will be lining up as a kicker for an NFL team, because there is about as much chance of him making soccer popular as there is of Andy Roddick ever beating Roger Federer again (6-4, 6-0, 6-2?....ouch... summing up the match, "Kia, the car manufacturer, sponsors a "play of the day" spot. I was talking with Mats Wilander after the match and he suggested Kia simply replay the second set")
However...that the media so desperately wants the idealistic Beckham to be a superstar here is not even the most ridiculous part of this story. Nor is the 250 million dollar deal the most ridiculous part. No, no, no. Those are just the icing on a now fully baked cake of absurdity.
The Galaxy feel they will find their next player by.......holding an open tryout. Yes, that's right, an open tryout. Any member of the general public with $130 entrance fee can get a chance to end up on the squad.
What?
Possibly the highest paid athlete in the world might end up sharing a locker room with some also-ran ex high-school superstar (likely now high school coach) who never forgave himself for giving up after playing college ball?
Did the entire coaching & scouting team get a vacation after landing Beckham, and then someone realized they didn't have enough players, so the owner made some intern figure out how to find a player, only to find out that the intern wanted a shot and came up with this nonsense to get himself a tryout.
That, or someone saw that Mark Wahlberg movie, Invincible, about the guy who made the Philadelphia Eagles through an open tryout in the 70's and figured, what a great story....hey, I have a team, and what the heck, sure the Beckham deal was gratuitous, but ANOTHER publicity stunt can't hurt, right? Let's have an open tryout! Maybe some day someone will make a movie about us and Joseph Gordon Leavitt can play me!
2 comments:
Haha, an open tryout...Jeff and I were talking and we figured the MLS had used all of their resources signing Beckham, so they were going to start selling raffle tickets for the honor of playing next to Becks. Guess we weren't too far off. The MLS makes me laugh.
That reminds me; I refuse to refer to him as "Becks" and I especially refuse to refer to he and his wife collectively as "Posh & Becks"
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