Almost as soon as the final whistle blew in Spain and Real Madrid became champions of La Liga, the sniping started. I've been wandering around message boards, online news sources, various blogs and so on, and the amount of trash-talk and snide remarks about David Beckham's imminent arrival in MLS is just staggering to me. A bit of context for you: I'm English, and a Sheffield Wednesday supporter, but I moved to California 2 years ago, and became a Los Angeles Galaxy supporter by default - my wife's uncle has followed them since the first MLS season, and he took me to the Home Depot Center to see my first game there last season. I've been to probably 100 live games in England, at three different levels following Wednesday around the leagues, and seen hundreds more on TV. I've seen Galaxy live 12 times now, and every match I'm not at, I watch on TV later. I also watch a lot of Premier Development League soccer with the San Fernando Valley Quakes. So I think I know my stuff, and have a good basis for comparison. I don't think anyone will ever claim that, right now, the quality of play in MLS is as good as the EPL. It's not, and any fan with a sensible brain can see that. Football in England has over 100 years of history, development, and is ingrained into the national psyche. MLS has a tenth of that, and despite the hard work of a lot of people trying to make a difference, soccer still remains probably the #5 team sport in the country in terms of popularity, behind NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. If I was to try to place MLS within the English system, I would say that most of the top MLS teams would be able to compete comfortably in the Championship, and would in no way be out of their depth of overawed by the likes of Leicester, Coventry or my own Sheffield Wednesday. However, when I listen to people like Alan Mullery on Sky Sports claiming that MLS is at the same level as the Football Conference in England, calling it a “mickey mouse league” and that Beckham is effectively coming to the US for a early retirement and a nice kickabout in the sunshine, or when I read articles like this one - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...all.html?in_article_id=462905&in_page_id=1779 - written by some arsehole named Paul Hayward for the Daily Mail, I become genuinely annoyed. I doubt that Mullery has ever seen a Major League Soccer game. It pains me to say it, but my countrymen have become arrogant. Or maybe they were always arrogant, and I just never noticed it before. Whatever the case may be, it seems to have become something of national pastime to rubbish the "Yanks" who play "soccer", and to write snickering little articles with patronizing "aww, look at the little Americans trying to be footballers" tones. Even some respected British TV broadcasters, whose names I will not mention and whose opinions I used to respect, can barely suppress indulgent smiles of patronizing pity when mentioning Beckham, Galaxy and MLS. Just to go off on little tangent, I'm really getting fed up of this "football vs. soccer" argument. I posted this in a different thread the other week, but its worth repeating: the words football and soccer are BOTH right. The reason it is called football is NOT because you use your feet to kick the ball; it's because you play it ON FOOT, as opposed to being on horseback. Football has been played for centuries in various forms or another, but wasn't until the late 1800s, when the different codes of football started being set down, that the names started being changed to differentiate them. Our version - Association Football - can correctly be called both football and soccer, because "football" is the sport and "association" is the code of football being played. Soccer is an abbreviation for the word Association, which was actually developed (shock, horror) in England (!!) by public school players who had a habit of adding "-er" onto words (rugby football became rugger, association football became soccer). So, if you're speaking English, and you call our sport football, you're correct. And, if you're speaking English, and you call our sport soccer, you're also correct. I don't understand how people can be fans of this great sport of ours and not at least have some basic understanding of how it developed and got its name. If I see another derogatory article with the word soccer enclosed in quotation marks, I might put my fist through the screen. So – to get back on topic - the thing which puzzles me the most is why America is singled out for so much derision. In the furore surrounding Beckham’s move to Galaxy, it has been almost totally ignored that the great Roberto Carlos, one of the best left backs of his generation, is also leaving Real to go play in Turkey. Why is there no national outcry that a player as brilliant as him, who can arguably bend the ball better than Beckham can in certain circumstances, will be finishing his career there? Why is there no hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth at the prospect of Roberto Carlos turning up to play in front of 10,500 fans when Fenerbahçe take on the mighty Çaykur Rizespor? My opinion is that it’s because the English, my fellow countrymen, have a very ugly and unbecoming superiority complex where the United States is concerned, which they continually feel they continually have to voice. They don’t like the fact that someone of Beckham’s caliber and stature, who has been one of the best English footballers of his generation, might want to try a new challenge. Everyone goes on about the money – and it is, of course, a very large contract – but they continually overlook the fact that his salary from Galaxy is a tiny percentage, and the vast majority actually comes from sponsorship and marketing. As is the way with the British press: accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive. They also continually overlook what I believe are genuinely altruistic ambitions on Beckham’s part. He wants to help develop soccer in the United States. He believes his presence in MLS will increase its international exposure – which, of course, has already happened. He wants to work with his academy here. All of these things are noble and admirable aims, and I genuinely hope he succeeds at all of them. But, again, most of these things are swept under the carpet by the press in favor of lurid tales about scientology, palm trees and Tom Cruise. Part of it might be because football is one of the few things western Europe has always done better than the United States. I don’t think anyone will argue with me when I say that the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, and probably the Dutch Eredivisie are all better leagues than MLS in terms of quality of play and fan support. And for the foreseeable future, that is unlikely to change: Western Europe and South America will remain the center of the footballing world. So, if their position is not under threat, why is there such a need for England in particular to have such a knee-jerk pre-emptive defense mechanism? I genuinely don’t have an answer to my own question. It’s inexplicable. I’ve heard things like “it’s a waste of his talent”, “he still has so much to give”, and “It will affect his international career”. I don’t see any validity to either the first or the third argument, and if the second is true, what’s wrong with him giving it to a league which needs it more? It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the novelty wears off and it becomes commonplace to see Beckham taking to field for a regular season game on a wet Thursday night in Ohio. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the media when people actually start watching MLS games and appreciating them for the qualities they have, and realize that the erroneous judgment calls they made about the league’s perceived lack of skill turn out to be so obviously false. Most of all, I hope I am able to see someone shove Alan Mullery’s words back down his arrogant little throat. I am English. My heart belongs to Sheffield Wednesday. But the rest of me is hoping, willing, and desperately wanting MLS, US soccer as a whole, and the Great Beckham Experiment especially, to succeed.
Listen mate, I agree with you about all the snide sniping from England, which is just typical of their own innate inferiortiy complex in all manners and levels of life. Why the "strongest richest league in the world" needs to stoop to these tactics beats me. But why, why, why, WHY WOULD YOU EVER READ THE DAILY MAIL!? It is an atrocious right-wing, xenophobic, mouth frothing affornt to journalism. Stop it! The flip side of the mail and other comments is...well, otherwise noone would have written a word about MLS all summer long, so with the rules and all publicity is good publicity...
I know. It was one of many articles I read tonight. That one just struck me as especially idiotic. One thing I wanted to mention - which I forgot to put in my diatribue up there - was about having a thick skin. One of the things about becoming an international presence, as MLS and Galaxy has done these last few months, is that you will always have your fair share of detractors. Fine. I can cope with that. It's par for the course, and comes with the territory. But when respected sports journalists (and I am NOT including the Daily Mail there...) write lead articles or broadcast stories which are just, plain and simple, factually WRONG, there's only so many times you can hear it repeated before you feel the need to correct them. Anyway...
Myself am an Englishman and follow football back here and in the US. I have followed the MLS on and off for the last few years and have seen it develop bit by bit. The quality overall has greatly improved and in all honesty I would say alot of the teams are easily on par with the likes of Fulham or Middlesbrough. As you pointed out the English Leagues have 100 years of development and 100 years of getting things right. All in all I would say the MLS has developed well in 10% of the time. Now don't get me wrong the MLS is by know means perfect and IMVHO still needs tweaking here and there but it's not far off. Beckham is now 32 and in all honesty if someone offered me a $125 million pay day I would take it. This aside Beckham will give his all in every game, he will motivate and has an underlying passion to win. Once the fuss has died down all the kids in the U.K. will have/want a Galaxy shirt with Beckham on the back and we will be setting the recorders to watch the games. The U.K. loves a good bandwagon to jump on.
Cool post, and pleasant reading Just to respond to some of the things you said earlier: 1) MLS is #5 in America. You left out the NBA. Chances are that if MLS does become #4, the first league it would pass up is the NHL. What happens the day after that happens is anyone's guess. 2) Roberto Carlos leaving for Turkey is a different story because Roberto's probably not expecting to be playing for Brazil in 2010, whereas Beckham will probably be making a push to do so, as well as Euro 2008. Plus, the English media are much more focused on one of their own national players than an former Brazil international. 3) Englishmen are not the only haters; it's just different than here While I agree that many of the neysayers in English journalism is from arrogance, American journalists have a different agenda to come into play. If MLS becomes big in America, that means they actually have to cover it to save their jobs, which means they either change their tune and say they love the sport and become seen as hypocritical (see Jim Rome/NASCAR), or they remain soccer-haters, new soccer fans get turned off, and network execs hire other journalists to take their place that the audience would more want to watch. At least Englishmen are bashing MLS and our country. American critics are doing their best to only focus on the negative aspects of MLS, while trying to ignore major soccer stories in the States, like 68,000 in Giants Stadium, 70,000 in Houston for the Gold Cup, Beckham winning La Liga even though those critics were quick to ride him off as signing with Galaxy to end his career, etc. You'll tell who the REAL sports journalists are now and who's a really weak journalist when one is able to analyze how Beckham's doing on Galaxy, decide if Galaxy are MLS Cup contenders, and how Becks will do on the national team, and the other one either keeps ignoring the teams in September, and the only thing he/she has to contribute to soccer in America is Posh Spice.
The negativity towards the MLS completly baffles me. People should be embracing all sports. The MLS is run professionally and with the best of intentions for all concerned.
im not sure why... its been made quite apparent that soccer is one of the last national treasures england has left to hold on to and even now its become perverted. the straight fear shown by these types of articles and within the interviews featuring prominent brits in the world of soccer is pretty hilarious. its been made painfully clear that england is simply afraid of america being the better footballing nation, and while i dont think that will happen for a few more years id take the odds of the nats winning a wc before the brits, simply because while it may take us up to 20 years to reach that competitive level the brits have little hope now with no relief in sight. theyre scared, its understandable.
That's an ideal world. Lets face it, in America, there are multiple sports fighting for tv time and revenue on all marketing fronts. And in the world of soccer/football, there are leagues all over the world competing for international marketing revenue on all fronts, and being the league where the superstars want to come to. MLS is competing with both American sports leagues, and the world's biggest soccer leagues in order to grow, so surely not everyone's going to be hoping for the best. A lot of these journalists who cover a sport in the American market or the European soccer market has very little to gain from the success of a newer league with major potential to reach their current audiences.
There is certaintly a sense of jealousy that no Premiership side could not attract "Goldenballs" to sign for them. It will be interesting to see where the MLS is in 10 years, I fear alot of supporters will have deserted many clubs in the Premiership by then.
Also behind college football and basketball, as well as many non-team sports. Roberto Carlos is Brazilian, and so of little interest to the English media. The Turkish league isn't that weak, and has a few teams who could survive in the Premiership. If Beckham was moving to Turkey the criticism would be of a similar level, and if Carlos moved to MLS, no-one in England would notice. I don't follow the Brazilian media, so I wouldn't know about that. Maybe there is gnashing of teeth. Believe me, no-one considers MLS to be a challenge for Beckham. It's considered an early retirement, that's what all the fuss is about. He still has the ability to compete at the top level, and instead he's going to play in a league way below his level where he won't be able to achieve anything. As is the way with the press in general. If you don't like the press then don't read it. Altruistic? I can think of 250 million non-altruistic reasons why he's going to America. He'll get to keep all the image rights that he used to have to share with Madrid. Defense mechanism? Do me a favour. No-one here is scared of MLS. Is it a defense mechanism when NFL fans criticise NFL Europe? If I didn't know otherwise I'd think you were one of those insecure Americans who think everything's a conspiracy against them. There is a serious persecution complex on this forum.
^^^^^^^ Said everything i wanted to say apart from this... No english side could attract beckham because they wouldent want to pay him 50 million a season, the fact is mls will never be big outside of america and maybe asia, if at all .
British sports journalists are perhaps the laziest people in the world. It just takes something like this to make people notice. SKY have quite a history of employing similar pundits whose expertise is in being controversial rather than actually offering any insight. And you have to consider the "contrast" angle to make the story bigger. Beckham leaves Real Madrid after winning a hugely important trophy in front of 85000 fans, with possibly hundreds of thousands celebrating in the streets, to go and play in......... The bigger the contrast, the bigger the story. Whether the story is actually accurate or not isn't a concern of the British press. That just isn't how they work. Sensationalism is the name of the game.
Luckily we don't have anyone here named, for example, Steven A. Smith or Jim Rome, who run the exact same schtick.
To the original poster: Well said sir. I would love for you to post everything you said on a major British soccer website/blog/message board/newspaper, and would be curious to see what kind of responses you get. I think many in the UK need to hear this coming from another Englishman, and not from us Yanks.
Good post. I like to hear from British nationals living in America who show a good attitude - that shows me a reflection of: A) they themselves are confident in what they have brought as individuals to our country, B) how much they are appreciated and valued by others in our country. This poster's point-of-view isn't far from that of the position of Beckham himself, in a sense: he loves America as much as his homeland, he came here by choice, he brings tremendous offerings to the table, and the people here love him and will embrace him. Englishmen should be proud that Beckham is their ambassador. If Beckham helps raise the level of American soccer, you better believe Americans will remember and appreciate that. And all the more that England should be proud of their successful "student" (the MLS). Has America ever shown itself to be ungrateful to its English roots? Why is the EPL more popular than the MLS among American soccer fans right now? The same reason all the South American soccer talent heads to Spain. England and America will forever be tied together with a thin thread, apart from the Latin countries. Language, history, religion, culture. England has a new soccer ally. In theory, it should raise the waters on both sides of the pond. Look at how many American soccer players are playing the English leagues right now, for example. Would you rather they all went to Mexico or Brazil or Argentina?
Good post. David Beckham is just the person to take football to the next level in the US, I guarantee by Christmas the must have thing in the U.K. for kids will be a Galaxy shirt with Beckham on the back. In recent years he has taken a lot of flack and always come back better. The British press thrive of bad news, they love it. They say being England manager is the hardest job in football, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Most British people gain their opinions from the press. It doesn't matter if it's about War, health or sport the press are like vultures waiting to pounce a dying creature. They thrive on failure, most tabloids will already have their headlines wrote about Beckham. The problem with modern day Britain is the majority of people think the World owes it something. There is still alot of negativity towards not only America but other countries. I would take the negative opinions with a very large pinch of salt.
The main point here is fear, there are fears from the Brits that we will become better and pull all their international talents over here, because everyone wants to live in America and their league will suffer or even crumble. Also fear from our American press or sports media who's not willing to adapt to change and there is a level of arrogance on our part as well about something that is not totally an American creation. American attitudes about being the best, is why it's difficult for soccer to get fully supported here...American arrogance, if I'm not the best, I will not play. I see American soccer on the same level as Brazilian basketball now, they aren't far from the world best in ability and talent and we know who the best are! We should be looking at soccer in this country in this same way, we are improving by leaps and soon we will be the best. All Americans must look at it from that stand point...our guys are among the best in their league now and they know it wont be long until we beat them. We need to support American soccer on all levels, keep one fact in mind...we have the worlds largest youth soccer system in the world,think what that says about the future of American soccer!
Given that most people in England don't give MLS even a second's thought, this is extremely improbable. The comments about MLS are born out of simple ignorance more than anything else.
The oroginal post was perhaps the best I've read in the last 12 months. (See, front page posters? You don't have to be bombastic and wry to write a scintillating article that grabs the attention of your readers.)
Thank you very much, and thank you to the people who gave me positive rep. I wasn't trying to be sensational - I just wanted air a few thoughts which had been slowly fermenting in the depths of my brain for the last few months. I also wanted to ensure that I had a sense of perspective and reality in what I was saying - too many posts on BigSoccer are of the "MLS sucks/No it doesn't/Yes it does/U suck" variety, which really do no good at all when trying to have a sensible discussion about these things. Dissenters are fine - LegBreakers comments, for example, were all perfectly valid counter-arguments to my own, and were written in an intelligent, productive way. I was really just wanting to vent my frustration about how plain WRONG some of the journalistic opinions are. I've been reading some of Alexi Lalas's comments this morning about how the EPL is an 'inferior product', and while I disagree with him on a basic level on EPL vs MLS quality of play, I really can't blame him for getting a little prickly. I listened to an interview he did with BBC Radio 5 Live the other week, where the two sports presenters were basically humoring him, before launching into questions which basically amounted to things like "would you sell him if a proper club, in Europe, wanted to buy him?", and other such patronising and not-so-thinly-veiled insults to Lalas and Galaxy personally, and MLS and US soccer in general. I'm not so naive as to think that everyone will agree with Beckham's decision to move here, or that even everyone within the USA will welcome him with open arms, but I'd at least like to think that the people who espouse the so-called 'World's Game' will gradually come to realize that "the world" doesn't just mean the bits of it that they consider worthy of development.
Well said Sheff Wed. As a Scotsman who emigrated to Canada and I live in Toronto. I have never been as excited as I am now with TFC and MLS. I have followed the league since its inception and enjoy it. Beckham will be well received here as the tendency on this side of the pond is to be positive and celebrate talent and success as opposed to the old British glass is half empty mentality that I used to see back home. The fundamental fact about your well thought out argument is that no on over here actually gives a crap what the Brits think. If nothing else, it will spur the league onward. I can sense a tiny little bit, that the tide is turning. It's slow, but if you go to BMO field right now, there is a stench of optimism for soccer, at least in Toronto. Cheers.
I would also like to point out how well written the original post was. Proper grammar, proper spelling, etc., are unusual for a text of that length written by a Big Soccer poster.
...unless other major countries have a reason to watch; for example, if the best or most popular player from that country is playing on an MLS team.