Last Sunday the Los Angeles Galaxy, led by their high-priced superstar import from England, David Beckham, beat out the Houston Dynamo, 1-0, to capture their third Major League Soccer Championship in team history.
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With his contract now expired, Beckham could finally breathe a sigh of relief. After all the ups and downs of his MLS career, he finally brought a soccer championship to the city of Los Angeles. Still, the five-year pact that he signed back in 2007 became a deal of unfulfilled expectations and was plagued by injuries, marketing ploys and a non-committal stance by the legendary Brit. Beckham's time in Los Angeles was ultimately a failure.
In late 2006, the Galaxy began negotiating with Beckham's camp to bring the six-time English Premier League champion to the United States. The proposal became a league-wide agenda setter as MLS executives knew Beckham's arrival would generate immense public exposure, boost sales and hopefully catapult MLS into the international conversation. The finalized contract was for five years and $32.5 million — a figure that was evenly split up among the fourteen MLS teams.
The immediate fallout was explosive. ESPN geared all its attention to Beckham's arrival, introduction and eventual on-field debut (which was postponed due to a lingering ankle injury). Yet the immense following would all be for naught if he couldn't deliver on his contract's intended purpose: to stimulate the appeal of the MLS in the long-term.
Five years, two loans to AC Milan, an ongoing beef with teammate Landon Donovan and three catastrophic injuries later and the MLS is still an after thought. The league did receive newly revised television deals and an increased following, but it's locked in as the nation's sixth most popular professional league after the NFL, MLB, NBA, NASCAR and NHL.
Beckham never grasped the significance of this experiment. He stood as the singular pivot point in the MLS and its future, bringing the entire league to the precipice of national adoration. Fans and players across the world knew that Americans would never fully respect the sport as they do baseball and American football. But soccer could still be massively popular here — a possibility that former Galaxy general manager Alexi Lalas envisioned when he brought Beckham over from Europe.
The midfielder's resistance to accept his role as a renaissance figure for professional soccer in America led to public backlash. And when the Brit left on loan twice to play for AC Milan — where he succeeded — MLS fans and followers suffered here in the States.
Oddly enough, over Beckham's tenure with the MLS, the American national teams gained an immense following. Thanks to the successes in their respective World Cups, the men's team (led by Donovan, Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard) and the women's team (led by Hope Solo, Abby Wambach and Alex Morgan) gave rise to a whole new generation of soccer fans. This seemingly overshadowed Beckham's disappointments with the MLS.
With Beckham now on the verge of signing a lucrative deal with a French club, MLS fans can only look back on the past five years and think of what could have been. And with the NFL, NBA and MLB all reaching new collective bargaining agreements and television deals, the MLS will remain an ESPN2 outcast.
