The council has agreed to partially fund a match between the Beckham-led LA Galaxy and Wellington Phoenix, owned by millionaire property developer Terry Serepisos, should negotiations for the Westpac Stadium-hosted match be successful. It would cost more than $1.1 million to bring Beckham and his team to the city. Link:http://www.stuff.co.nz/4180474a11.html I am assuming that if this match does indeed take place the Australia tour will be extended to New Zealand.
Update: The football superstar is due in the capital in December when his LA Galaxy team plays the Wellington Phoenix. Link: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318241/1324567
That's the truth. It's not even about the Galaxy. It's just about Beckham. Put Beckham on a team with a bunch of random people you pick off the street and nobody will even care. I'm not comparing the Galaxy to people off the street (even though it aint far off) It's just so obvious people only wanna see Beckham, not the real team.
Unheard of in any other league or organization. Just shows how greedy AEG is. If I were Beckham I'd find a way to void my contract.
Not really, Euro teams do exhibitions during the entire off season basically. Chelsea and Celtic did a tour of North America. Man Utd has been going to Asia the last few summers. Euro teams basically have 1 month of time off because then they start all their preseason exhibition games, then some meaningless cups, and before you know it, their leagues have started again.
Exactly what I was about to say. This Thread reminds me that this article http://sports.yahoo.com/mls/news;_ylt=AlVxhHJpLJneRdTLDkFSeqMmw7YF?slug=ro-lalas082707&prov=yhoo&type=lgns is just more Alexi BS!!!
Do you watch for any other reason, besides him the team is a bunch of goof balls(maybe a couple of others are worth a hill of beans, i.e. Xavier) As good as Beckham is, It's hard to watch this team, they stink. Without him, I'd check out until next season. Not really, it's like a car crash, you've got to see how bad it can get.
Que ut Funny, I am kinda interested in what team they will have for this Austrailia and New Zealand trip? Im seriously thinking that many G's on the team now will not be as of Nov. 1st 2007. It just might be Becks playing as member of the Galaxy with 5-10 guest players.
What "IF" the Galaxy make the PLAYOFFS, and Take it all the way(LOL). What would be the SCHEDULE then. WIll Beckham even play.
I say run the team into the ground...play right through December and January if you can set it up. Sort of like philosophy "OK, you don't want to play hard during the regular season...no problem, we'll keep playing after the season" (a la Herb Brooks). Who cares, anyway, the season is a total writeoff. I would, of course take care of Becks by only playing him in the final 15 minutes of each game. Well, I wouldn't really do that, but I will certainly NOT feel sorry for the Galaxy players for having to play a few extra exhibition matches.
UPDATE! SCHEDULE CHANGE IN NEW ZEALAND: The Galaxy have announced that their match against the Wellington Phoenix will now be played on Saturday, December 1. The match had originally been scheduled to be played on Sunday, December 2, but has now been moved forward 24 hours. The match will still be played at Westpac Stadium in the New Zealand capital of Wellington. Link: http://www.mlsnet.com//news/team_ne...t_id=122337&vkey=news_lag&fext=.jsp&team=t106 Update #2 The football game between A-league football side Wellington Phoenix and the LA Galaxy - featuring star recruit David Beckham - will be screened on free-to-air television. TVNZ has been awarded host broadcast rights for the match in the capital on the first Saturday of December and will screen the game live on TV One. More than 11,000 tickets have already been sold for the Phoenix-Galaxy match. Link: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/latest/200710100732/wellington_phoenix_game_to_screen_free_to_air What this means is that the game will probably be brodcast in the US, maybe FSC will pay the rights for the game, I mean the game got rescheduled to a better day, a brodcast feed is available, what better hint do we need. Just a thought.
When I think about this, there is some upside. So long as we don't over do it and tire the team out, or get some devistating injury to a key player... It would actually be a good thing if the G's spent the off season traveling around the world, getting used to all of the media attention, and the pressure of being in the limelight. Then come back next season having spent months playing together and learning each others tendancies, and actually progressing from getting used to each other to getting creative with each other. Then come back a few months before the season starts to train up and get ready, play a few friendlies to tune up, and then dominate the MLS and Superliga, while enjoying the limelight of it all. Hey... it could happen.
Plus after we win the MLS Cup we'll be in Concacaf play. An offseason tour will mean our guys will be relatiely fresh for those games instead of out of match fitness since the games occur in late feb/early march.
I was just poking around some NZ boards since the Crew's Duncan Oughton is currently over in NZ for World Cup Qualifiers, and I saw this recent article: Beckham games sell fast Looks like they've sold 23,000 tickets so far, but still need to sell a few more to break even.
With two and a half months remaining, I dont see no problem on selling 7,000 tickets more just to break even. There is no doubt that the game will bring a big attendance of more than 30K that day.