DownSwinging.com

“All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us. As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways – on the field, off the field. Does the fact that he earns that much more money come into it? Yeah. If someone’s paying you more than anybody in the league, more than double anybody in the league, the least we expect is that you show up to every game, whether you are suspended or not. Show up and train hard, show up and play hard. Maybe he’s not a leader, maybe he’s not a captain. Fair enough. But at a minimum, you should bust your ass every day. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t think that’s too much for us to expect. Especially when he’s brought all this on us. When David first came, I believed he was committed to what he was doing. He cared. He wanted to do well. He wanted the team and the league to do well. Somewhere along the way – and in my mind it coincides with Ruud being let go – he just flipped a switch and said, ‘Uh-huh, I’m not doing it anymore’.”

- Landon Donovan in, new book, ‘The Beckham Experiment’

As you read above, there is, or I guess was, a lot of emotion held in by the USA vice-captain, Landon Donovan, who shares a dressing room with David Beckham. Beckham arrived in L.A. almost two years ago, and his influence on his new team, the Los Angeles Galaxy, has been less than ideal. There are a number of problems I have with this entire situation. Lets deal with them chronologically:

First, Beckham should have never been signed by Alexi Lalas, the GM at the time of the deal. It was a plan that was doomed to fail from the start. He was brought in to do two things; first, to bring excitement to the MLS via fan base enthusiasm, as well as create an atmosphere in the league wherein foreign players would see the league as an acceptable option to end their careers. The second was to try and instill a winning environment to the Los Angeles Galaxy. Seeing as the Galaxy have yet to make the playoffs since Beckham’s arrival, this clearly has not happened. As for bringing excitement to the MLS, Beckham’s signing was seen more as a novelty than as an actual soccer-motivated move. After his first several matches, people remembered they were watching the MLS, and the fans who were not originally interested in the MLS, reverted to their former ways.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, the decision, whose ever it was, to make Beckham captain, was a horrible one. Not only did the renaming of the captaincy from Donovan to Beckham, create a tense atmosphere from the get-go, but it put additional pressure on Beckham to be who he isn’t, a leader. No discredit to him, he did captain England for over 5 years, its just not in his nature to be a vocal leader. (See this blogger’s chronicle of the winger’s great career.)

Next, hiring Ruud Gullit as manager was a complete joke. The Galaxy hired Gullit, a sub-par European manager, in order to try and bring an even more experienced mind to the struggling club, as well as help Beckham settle in even more. After his 9 month tenure, at the end of which, Gullit quit, it was made clear that he saw it as a paid vacation rather than an actual job. There were also numerous reports of Gullit’s condescending nature towards all of the players except Beckham. Thus, alienating the players who had been there the longest. As Donovan mentions above, Gullit’s departure did not sit well with Becks.

Lastly, I would like to point out that this outburst is not the result of unrealisticly unprofessional behavior on the part of David Beckham, or of childish whining by Landon Donovan. This problem is a result of the poor personnel decisions made by the Los Angeles Galaxy. First of all, the signing of Beckham brought them millions upon millions of dollars, but it created a huge problem within the squad, as seen in the diatribe unleashed above. The Galaxy knew that this type of problem would surface, as signing an ageing superstar winger is not going to fix a poor team. Furthermore, Beckham did not take the Galaxy or the MLS seriously. This is why he consistently trains with European teams in the winter. He even lengthened his loan at AC Milan, because he didn’t want to return just yet. Great vibes coming from el capitan. The Galaxy knew all of this and more when they were deciding whether or not to bring him over. Their choice to go through with it anyways, tells me more about the universal lack of interest in the MLS, than I needed to know.