By James Coggins David Beckham has said recently that he believes one day in the future Major League Soccer will eventually count itself amongst the premier football competitions in the world. Unfortunately Beckham's words, never revered but usually respected, will fall on deaf European ears. Facts are usually the defining factor in sport and the very 'fact' that Luke Rodgers partners Thierry Henry in attack for New York Red Bulls surely means that although keen, the rosters of the MLS cannot compete with the squads of the top tier teams in the elite European Leagues. Many great athletes have sailed their ships full of European and South American adoration to the shores of various incarnations of North American soccer in an attempt to rekindle Yankee desire for a top level soccer competition. But the simple matter is that no-one has yet lit European fans' imaginations alight; the differing sporting cultures and quite simply different attitudes to entertainment, mean that 'soccer' will always struggle to flourish in the US of A. American sports are, it could be argued, built around closed case scenarios. In American Football the quarterback throws the ball and despite any result the action is over in seconds; similarly there is one pitch and one hit or miss in baseball. Even in sports like ice hockey and basketball, although the clock is running constantly and there are less closed case scenarios, most of the time play is broken up with time-outs, segments of the game and rolling substitutions. In basketball for example; an attack is in essence an attack versus defence set up with play going from end to end with a team needing to score with every attack to win the game, games are very rarely ended with large score margins and the best teams are those that score every time they attack rather than those that defend with the most conviction. American sport is in its essence easier to study and easier to analyse in terms of averages and other statistics; it is a more mechanical process, athletes needing to be specifically adept at very specific talents within their sport. The sporting philosophies are no worse or better than their European equivalents but the way each side of the Atlantic views the other is by and large with disdain and misunderstanding. The Simpsons show the American attitude to 'soccer' particularly well; the attention of the American fan is better caught and held by sports where the action is constant but nevertheless well highlighted by plays, or short bursts of action. This is in part to do with the development of American sports through different eras; whereas European and Latin American sporting passions and coverage travelled on very traditional and natural paths, as the NFL was looking to be televised across the states the executives within the sporting bodies went to the television company executives and were told that to make their sports more coverable they would have to cater for various advertising deals and make it easily interruptible whilst not losing the storyline of each game. Cricket has been described as 'baseball on valium' and the beauties and intricacies that many around the world see in the game are completely lost on all Americans, only immigrants from the sub-continent showing any affinity to the game in America. Fly over any city in America and you will see hundreds of basketball courts, baseball fields and, in the colleges and schools, huge stadia to cater for the thousands who take part in watching American football. You would have to work very hard to encourage any neighbourhood children state-side to go out for a kick around until the light is gone as is the way in European childhoods. The court, gridiron and diamond are the preferred sporting amphitheatre.... continued at David Beckham, MLS and the North Atlantic sporting chasm