Needless to say, Beckham was greeted with a mixed reaction to say the least, with several anti-Beckham signs in the stands and certainly a good amount of booing. Just before half-time Beckham went over to the stands where some particularly raucous fans were shouting at him, allegedly to shake their hands, and things turned a bit ugly. Before I get into anything else, this was inordinately stupid of Beckham. Why would you ever try and interact with the fans that are hating on you? That can only go poorly, and sure enough it did. Becks has never exactly been Albert Einstein, and he sure demonstrated that yesterday. Just a poor, poor decision from the England international.

But what I really want to talk about here is why the fans are justified in giving Beckham the treatment he got last night. In some ways, this is partially caused by some culture differences, at least at the sporting level. European soccer players tend to be a bit more vocal regarding their own opinions of whatever situation they may be in. They seek new teams, criticize those around them and ask for increased salaries at a far more public level than athletes do in the United States. Sure, on occassion we do hear of players requesting a trade, but by and large players are signed by an organization, paid money, and they go out and play for them until they are told otherwise. So the fact that Beckham became disillusioned with life Hollywood and decided to seek out an actual football club was rather surprising to fans, or surprising that it would have happened already. See, another key difference between Europe and the U.S. is the importance placed on contracts. Apparently, European contracts mean next to nothing, while in the United States they are everything. Therefore most Americans see the whole process of being ended by the fact that Beckham’s contract isn’t finished, therefore, he must stay. Unfortunately, the MLS is in a place where it must adopt to European ways and mannerisms, and not the other way around.

But do not let Beckham off the hook for this reason. Despite the custom, the fact is that Beckham signed a contract making almost twice as much money as Alex Rodriguez each season, and has barely played for the team in the grand scheme of things. He was supposed to be the savior, the one to legitimize the MLS, and he has decided that responsibility was not something he wanted anymore. While Steve asserts this issue is mostly due to personnel decisions with the Galaxy, I fault Beckham. His ambassadorship of European football to the MLS has been a complete waste of time and money. It’s unfortunate that a man of his wealth and calibre took advantage of such a feeble league for his own selfish reasons. No one forced him to make the move to the U.S., but once he did, he was committed.

So if I was a Galaxy fan, or a fan of the MLS in general, I would feel betrayed by the English star. And I would be mad. Expect more of the same Beckham, you’re not making anyone happier.

“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.