Ignorance turned to venom however when a certain Englishman hit our shores last month. Those same commentators and sports editors that had made every effort to ignore or even belittle the beautiful game decided to attack the game and the very person that is David Beckham.
What makes David Beckham so special, and so threatening to the average soccer hater in the sports media? Well for one he’s more popular worldwide than any American athlete save perhaps, Tiger Woods. Secondly, Beckham is a figure unlike any other in world sports today: He mixes genuine celebrity with international stardom and a speciality, his set piece taking that are unmatched by anybody alive. Besides, Beckham unlike so many athletes today is a true professional and a genuine person who has overcome amazing adversity and fan hostility to become a one of a kind footballer. How popular is Beckham among the grassroots in the United States? Let me give you some startling case studies.
- Two weeks ago I traveled to Orlando on business. While there, I visited a local sports store, almost out of sheer amusment to see if Michael Vick’s jersey were still being sold. While in the store, three different people came in wanting Beckham LA Galaxy jerseys. The owner told them he had sold out of the only box sent him in ten hours and hadn’t recieved a second shipment yet because of such a backlog of orders. (BTW, the Vick jerseys were gone from the shelves!)
- A friend of mine who lives in Colorado visited Dick’s Sporting Goods. At the store he purchased a white David Beckham LA Galaxy T-shirt. He actually wanted a jersey, but they were sold out. He asked how well they were selling and the person working at the store told him that they had sold eight times more Beckham jerseys than Champ Bailey jerseys since the Beckham jersey was released. BTW, LA visits Colorado next Sunday.
- The other day I went to Sports Authority, again not seeking Beckham apparel, because after all I had never seen a single soccer jersey of any national or international club team on sale in any of the probably 30 plus Sports Authorty stores I have visited all over the country. I went to the store to see for myself how the new Miami Hurricane (American) football jersey looked. I was shocked to see a display with Beckham’s posted and an almost empty rack of shirts and jerseys. I asked the person in the store about the blue Galaxy jersey which I quite honestly want to buy and he told me all three shipments they have gotten of that jersey had sold out in mere hours. He also told me the Beckham merchandise is selling so quickly in stores across the nation, that the warehouses cannot keep up with the demand.
Now given these nuggets of information, in addition to the epic match we saw Saturday night with over 66,000 fans in attendance, do you think this sport, which is clearly bursting at seams on the grassroots level could get some respect from the sports media? I would think it would be good business to corner the market when a sport is receiving such a surge of popularity, but it seems some of the old bulls in American sports seem at the very least contemptuous of the game or the worst threatened by it. From these writers, we hear comparisons to the old NASL, but it bears repeating that in the days of the NASL, the US National Team hadn’t qualified for the World Cup in a generation and no American footballer could hope to land with a respectable club overseas. Today, the US enjoys the sixth longest streak for consecutive World Cup appearances on the globe, and has players of note competing in the very best leagues in the world. It seems David Beckham is proving beyond a reasonable doubt that soccer’s time has come in this country, and regardless of how some may feel about the game itself, its place on the American sports landscape is growing more secure as time goes on.
