whoah. that was really long. i appreciate the sincerity in your writing. much of what you have written is well understood, but some of it is inaccurate. while he hasn't intentionally sullied MLS' and the galaxy's image, the effect of what he's said has very much harmed the reputation of each. saying that the league is 10-15 years away from being competitive, saying that he needs to play there if he is to have any hope of playing for england, while each may be true to some extent, neither is fully accurate and those and other similar statements have made MLS out to be worse and have certainly undone some of the baby steps toward progress that were achieved during the past 2 years. recall, as well, that his international career would likely be over, but for his time with the galaxy. he has the galaxy to thank for his soft landing covered with money, for his opportunity to play every day and prove himself fit and skilled enough for an england call-up or two. sure, the galaxy and MLS certainly bungled the opportunity, but it's not like we got a beckham that was at his best. he was injured for the first half season, and he ********ed off the second half of last season, when he wasn't away for england games or training. further, if he made bad decisions, that's his to live with. it's not our job to bail him out because he thought his days of playing international ball were over. in fact, they likely were. in fact, he's been paid extremely handsomely. i'm not sympathetic to his whines about how excited it is to be with one of the best clubs in the world with all of these great players around him. he made the decision to come here, regardless of the circumstances and now he wants everyone to lay down and obey to give him some storybook ending. life doesn't always work out that way. and if he had to look to a model of how to conduct himself with class and grace and how not to make enemies, how not to make the league look bad, he need only have conducted himself like landon. i don't want him back. he came in as a wounded bird, we nursed him back to health, gave him back his wings, and he uses them to whinge. go away, beckham, and please, please, just shut your whiny mouth.
To delurkin: Do you work for 19 Entertainment? It's like saying to some of the people that got us in this financial mess, the people signing the loan docs-"Well I didn't know what I was signing for?" WTF? I didn't know that the payments and interest rates would be so high after 3, 4, 5 years. Give me a break! I'm sorry but if you are a grown ASS man in your 20's to 30's and you have to sign something, you better KNOW what you are signing for. What if the person that you "trust" tell you to just sign this and it was for your power of attorney for everything that you own, are you just going to sign it, not knowing what it was for. Your post is a joke! Thanks for the long and useless rant. Why don't you just open up a new thread for the people that sympathsize with poor lil, "I didn't know what I got myself into" and I'm too good to play in MLS, English boy. See what responses you get. BTW, Word up on what you said juniorLA. Represent yo!
Look... the Beckham saga has nothing to do with footballl, or which team he plays for in his remaining years. It has to do with RESPECT. Since Becks has been in Milan not once has he referenced the loving LA fans that supported him on his time at the Galaxy. Not once. His lack of respect is insulting to us Galaxy fans that cheered him on. The least he can do is let us know we were appreciated. He has done that every place he has gone except in LA. I am sure he does not really care, but from a football/soccer perspective he can not expect any respect back from us. Plain and simple. He could have handled this in a better way, and now the Galaxy are at a disadvantage to start the season. I am pissed.
I was looking at DB's Blog the last entry he made that speaks about LAG was on Christmas Eve http://davidbeckham.com/blog.php?id=84 keep my fitness levels up before heading back to the Galaxy in time for the start of the 2009 MLS season in the spring. the previous entry Well, the Galaxy have played their last match this year and now all the players head off on their winter breaks. We had a great trip to New Zealand and capped it all off with a strong performance against the Oceania All Stars. There are some very good players, who come from the Islands, so hopefully the match helped to raise the profile of some of these players and soccer in general over there. As for the Galaxy, the result and clean sheet sends everyone off on a high and we’ll definitely look to build on the confidence gained from this next year. Obviously, while the rest of the squad take a well-earned rest I’ll be heading off to Italy to join up with AC Milan in the New Year, which I’m really looking forward to. It’s an exciting prospect and if it means that I’m at full fitness when the Galaxy get back together then I’ll be happy. I'd like to hear a message from DB to Galaxy fans.....I think we are owed the courtesy of at least an explanation.
Beckham you have used (and abused) our trust and faith in you and then pretty much spit in our face after cashing our dirty american dollars. No wonder so many of us feels so disgusted by your actions... First you go on a loan and no no..of course it was just a loan you've stated that many times right?! After all you shook your hands on it with Tim Leiweke (laugh)...I'd be back you said...but then again...when opportunity arouse suddently you realized this is not about trust or commitment to a club whose fans supported you wholeheartedly up to that point... or fullfilling some contract....nothing but a piece of paper anyways....or respect...however cliche it may sound to you, there is actually such a thing...no...this was all about you, David Beckham, who can get extra 10 or so starts for the English team and shine in history where you feel you undoubtedly belong...Screw everything else. In order to achieve that, you started repeating how much you'd dislike coming back to US so much so that those Yanks would finally get your point? Well ok i did get it; with this comes price though, my total loss of respect for everything and anything that you might have done for this team or this league. Please do me a favor and stick to your modeling career....the last thing I wanna see is you coming back for 2-3 months before opting out... And to Landon Donovan: I love having you back; I feel sorry that things didn't go your way but I will always respect for what you've done here...I respect that you didn't look down on Galaxy ..that you didn't publicly whine about wanting to be traded at all costs and didn't act like that other immature primadona...Landon Donovan, I salute you....
I appreciate your sincerity too. Thanks for at least listening. I'm just giving one perspective as I clearly stated I didn't expect to change anyone's view. The truth is David Beckham was recalled to the England squad before he came to the G's. He was recalled based on his Real Madrid form. So it had nothing to do with coming to MLS and if he had gone to Serie A there is no reason to say his intl career would most likely be over - I'm not quite sure what you are saying there. You admit that what he has said in his comments may be true you just wish he had not been honest. I understand that. Capello has said he is more likely to play for England if he remains at AC Milan, he certainly promoted, even arranged the loan. It's clear he has had a hand in Beckham's motives. If you are unaware of any of this I'd be happy to point you to articles about it. I don't expect as I said for anyone to sympathize with the fact Beckham may not have been wise in his decision-making but I think it has to be accepted that the end of his intl career was part of the basis for his decision and he did not know that would change. I don't work for 19 entertainment. I wish I did I'm sure they'd pay better than my current gig but seriously, I don't know how old y'all are but for my part I'm in my forties. I took a job once a few years ago and I lasted a month. The company had spent money recruiting and my boss was pissed when I said sorry but I'm outta here. I felt a little bad that it hadn't worked out but I knew they'd over-sold the job and that salved my conscience quite a lot. They made it sound like something it wasn't and I walked away. So I can't sit in too harsh a judgement of Beckham because I've made a million bad decisions in my life and sometimes I've needed to back-track and sometimes I've gone into something in good faith and had it turn bad or had the situation turn inside out on itself. I don't want him back either juniorla because I simply don't think it's been a success or any good for the on-field product and I don't give a shit about the guys who cashed in. It makes no difference to me if Beckham goes and makes his millions some place else. To Pegasus, Beckham may not actually know whether he is staying or going as yet, you can't rely on the media - so on that basis don't you think he should hold off from making a statement until he knows, if and when he will return?
Not to rip off Seth Myers, but REALLY?? Hasn't he been over this, again and again? What more needs to be said? If he leaves, yes, he should issue a statement to the fans, but the deal remains undone and likely will not be resolved until the 11th hour. We all know why he is doing what he is doing. There is no mystery there.
delurkin, to clarify a few items, your timing is slightly off on his call-ups. he was called up by capello during last MLS season exclusively based on his MLS form. you may recall capello having commented on this in the press. we all know that capello has had a hand in the loans, that's all been well publicized, but to be more accurate, capello has said that beckham needed to be playing football. if he was not on a professional side during the MLS break, he would likely not have gotten call-ups because he would not have been match fit. capello never said that the only way that beckham would get another call-up would be if he played for milan. again, he got call-ups during last season while playing for the galaxy. i didn't say that beckham was honest in his statements, i said of his statements that "each may be true to some extent [but not] fully accurate" and that inaccuracy is what leads to the negative impression, not the extent to which they are accurate. it's one thing to take a job for which you are an at-will employee and to walk away because the job sucks and quite another to be rescued from the low point of your professional career with an extremely handsome offer, to accept and sign a multi-year contract and to profess that you were going to work to bring MLS up to world-class standard, that you used that gig to rehabilitate yourself, career-wise, and then take advantage of your employer that allowed you to be loaned to another club with sympathy for your international career, and then to whine about wanting out of your handsome contract to go work somewhere else and in the process to try to knock down your current employer's reputation as reasoning for why you wanted out. i mean, heck, did your employer loan you out to another job? no, right? the 2 situations are nothing alike, really, except that there is an employment situation at issue. it doesn't get us anywhere to make the comparison. we've all made certain decisions that we wish we hadn't and most of us have to deal with them and don't attempt to settle them in a spoiled, whiny, classless way. i agree with you that beckham was not able to improve the on-field product and the team will likely not perform appreciably differently without him, and would be served far better by the other players that we could obtain with the money that would have gone to beckham. and we all know this--of all the guys that "cashed in", there is no one who cashed in like beckham did during his time with the galaxy. what i see is that beckham didn't have the stones to go the long haul, to put in the time and effort for what is a truly difficult and too-often thankless task in building soccer in the USA. so he's running away. and, again, let him run. but he gets no sympathy from me. he could have handled it well, but he handled it very, very poorly.
Lets see...what has he said? quotes from Timmy, Brucie and the Italians When did we last hear DB reference LAG? I want to hear some gratitude for to both LAG and fans for supporting & buying the shirts not much to ask for....
I was simply responding to the above Juniorla. As this is not true, if David Beckham had gone to another team in July 2007 there is no reason to believe his international career would be over. I think we both agree that Capello has had a role in Beckham's motives. I mean Capello said and I quote, ''I think the (Italian) championship is a very strong league. The US championship is not the same. The level is different.'' I think his preference and opinion are clear to all including Beckham. Can you be specific please about what Beckham has said that is not true. I mean to what extent is it false to say the MLS is so many years away from being competitive? I can appreciate that you might think he should not have said it, fair enough, but I don't recall him saying anything that I considered "inaccurate". And you may want to ring-fence one bad decision from another but personally I consider the human condition to be universal. It is too easy to say do as I say but not as I would do. In all honesty, I don't think he can grow soccer in the US. I think it's a failed premise. Why continue to beat the dead horse. In his shoes I know what I would do, I think he was "sold" on this move - and in his shoes I would walk away if I could. How happy AEG must be too read all this. It suits them for us all to be angry with Beckham when really we should be angry that they put this freak-show ahead of the football, ahead of the team and ahead of actually winning, some money got made and we the fans got screwed but personally I have far more questions of the club's owners than I do of the english-import.
1 LAG reference, coming right up: "At the moment I'm still a Galaxy player," he (Beckham) said. "I respect the Galaxy and everything they have done for me. They have always been great to me." Seriously, he can't issue a statement like that until the deal is done. If he does and then is forced to return.... AWKWARD!!
Uhhh... I think the awkward factor was surpassed several weeks ago. The very fact that he wanted out of a 5 year contract would make it extremely awkward to come back in any circumstance. He actually should have never mentioned anything in the press until a deal was done. The whole point is that he forced the LAG hand by making things awkward to begin with.
Your missing the point... Becks has done wonders in raising the profile of the league, and it was a brilliant deal from the start. The problem is that he has now undermined any good he has done by divorcing his contract. He was the one talking about raising the profile of US Soccer, and being an ambassador. If he never said any of that it might be different, but he has now gone back on his word for selfish motives. Look I get that you understand his motivation is to be on the World Cup squad, but he has sacrificed his commitment to the MLS, and we think he is a douche bag! Its kind of like the Bachelor. He proposed to us on national television, and then decided he was in love with the other girl. He then proceeded to break up with us on live television breaking a long term commitment. David Beckham and Jason Mesnick are both bad people!
I regret that I acknowledged your sincerity. you are very clearly pushing an agenda here. at this point, examining your responses, it's very clear that you are one of beckham's goons. to go on from there, your logic is shite. first you say that beckham could have gone anywhere else to continue his international career. in the next sentence you attempt to aver that if not for AC milan, his international career would be over. by the way, nowhere in that quote by capello nor in any other quote by capello does capello say that beckham's international career would be over if he stayed at the galaxy. but this is beside the point. i am not wasting any more time on responding to a goon. or prove me wrong by becoming a consistent contributor during the season. i'll look forward to being proven wrong. i don't reckon that's any real risk. you've only just joined and only posted in this thread. it's pretty transparent. you should probably just go away.
Look I'm sorry that I've upset you. It was only my intention to put forward another perspective. I respect the rights of others to feel differently, but I do not hate Beckham. I'm not pushing an agenda but I am a sports blogger and I have followed this matter closely and yes, I have an opinion, I'm entitled to it as you are entitled to yours. I never said, Beckham could have gone anywhere, I said in my original post that on January the 10th 2007 his choice was MLS or Serie A. I think his intl career would have carried on as it has with either option. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I thought beckham;s Intl career would be over were it not for AC Milan, that isn't necessarily the case at all, there is no definite proof of this at all, but at the same time Capello has expressed a preference and that has figured, played a part, in all of this. I doubt I will become a consistent contributor, I will probably go back to lurking as before. I write a tremendous amount online each day, for a living and admit that I'm unlikely to become a regular forum contributor any time soon. To project2010 - perhaps I've missed the point or at least the perspective because I do not feel "jilted". For me it is quite simple, Beckham made a bad decision, partly his own fault, partly though he was misled. Once a person is sold on something with promises that are not kept and a pitch that paints an inaccurate picture, they don't have the same obligation to see the "sale" through, that's all I was attempting to say. In his shoes I'd do the same, all bets would be off. I also think he bought the profile - but profile raising alone will only do so much and it had run it's course and served what limited purpose it was going to. In some ways I think the most credible thing Beckham has done in the last two years is personally pay to end the freak show. He wants to be a footballer that's part of a team, where everyone has come to see the team, where if he is injured there won't be more people photographing the bench than photographing the game. He wants to do all he can to increase his chances, such as they may be, of representing his country. I haven't had much respect for Beckham over the last twelve months, but I have some for him now. Now I will take juniorla's advice.
David Beckham is one of the BIGEST Jerks to ever wear a Galaxy uniform, I say give him to Sh*tvas. He never cared for the team or fans from the begining or he would have never left. He would have stayed a practiced making free kicks so he wouldn't miss 90% f them. If we a Forced to take him back in July, Bruce should bench him for the rest of the season for being an F'n JERK! so he gets nice and out of shape. Landon is a gentleman and honors his contractual obligations.
That was a very dignified reply Delurkin. The simple fact is that at the time Beckham signed the contract with LA Galaxy he was not playing regularly with Real Madrid and did not have an international future. Therefore there was clear appeal in going to Amercia and being part of something all together different. A new challenge. There are plenty of opinions on whether his time with LA Galaxy has been a success. Statistics do though suggest he has raised the profile of the MSL. The situation is now totally different. The England manager, Fabio Capello, has made it abundently clear that Beckham will not will be considered to play for England unless he moves from the MSL. Anyone with the hunger and passion to play for his country would do the same as Beckham has done. AC Milan showed an interest in him and he knew that by playing in Serie A would keep him in the frame for further England games. This should not be underestimated. People talk about how much Beckham is paid but someone is only paid what they are worth. Also how many of you out there would turn down money that your employers offer you? Absolutely noone. It would certainly be interesting to see how much revenue he has generated both directly and indirectly to LA Galaxy and MSL. The profile of the MSL has certainly been raised here in the UK. I for one follow LA Galaxy now and have indeed travelled over to watch a couple of games last year (by the way I thought those games were extremely exciting affairs and the standard was not second rate as some people refer to it as). It would be good if this whole affair has a happy ending, at this stage this is hard to judge.
It is not hard to judge at all. Beckham is a shameless opportunist, a liar, and only those who disregard the actual "football" he offered on the pitch could think of his stay with the Galaxy one which has a happy ending. Except for the obvious: many, very many, will be happy to see the end of him.
Don't agree with Beckham being a 'shameless opportunist and a liar'. Like I mentioned in my previous post he has a huge desire to extend his England career and play at the next World Cup. He has more chance of this by playing with AC Milan. I agree that on the pitch Beckham has not made such an impact on the Galaxy in his first two seasons. However I would certainly like to know what revenue he has generated for Galaxy just to shut those up who have said he has been 'a waste of money'. PS lets not forget that LA Galaxy didn't pay a transfer fee for him as he was out of contract at Real Madrid. Therefore the saving on this was incorporated in his salary. This happens in football.
Maybe it's because Donovan can actually PLAY while Becky Boo SUCKS!! Becky has been taking millions and millions of dollars from a league while only scoring 5 times and sucking most of the the time while Landycakes gets little in comparison (900K) and was the TOP scorer in the league! The league has paid MILLIONS for each goal Becky has scored and even if you throw in the assist we've paid him a ton for those too!!
Agreed 100%. I'm horrified at 1) him ever returning to Galaxy 2) him ever being an owner of any MLS franchise as he mentioned in the press today Can't he just fade away from our continent for good?