He’s back in the England team and is a Spanish championship winner. Next on the David Beckham Revival Tour: Saving American “soccer”. Is Becks the man to help football break the dominance of the Big Four in the US?
Page 1 of 2 | Single page
I’m in the burger queue before the LA Galaxy-Chivas USA derby when the tequila-stoked Chivas Legion Kalifas burst into the stadium like a red and white tsunami.
“What the fuck! Who the hell are they!” asks the guy in front of me, taking a nervous step back as the crazy carnival of Spanish-chanting lunatics reminds Los Angeles that this is not a “sports” event – this is futbol!
“That’s the Chivas fans,” I tell him.
“Wow!” he says, obviously astonished. “Is it always like this?”
This is his first “soccer” game. You get the feeling it won’t be his last. He came because of David Beckham, as did 7000 new LA Galaxy season ticket holders. Even though Goldenballs isn’t here yet. In fact ticket sales have soared right across the country. When Beckham first signed to the MLS franchise, the US media had a collective fit. When he actually turns up to play, they’ll have an even bigger one. The hype is boiling nicely.
But, as the chanting, tattooed, pogoing, smoke-bomb tossing, goat-faced wrestling mask wearing Chivas fans prove, Bexmania isn’t the only mania in town. An increasing number of American soccer fans are seeking to recreate the passion, energy, spontaneity and noise they see and hear at European and Latin American games. Already these fans are helping save MLS games from the sterile, spoon-fed, Disneyfied McFandom that ruins the atmosphere at most other US sports.
Beckham might lure tens of thousands of Americans to soccer, but it’s the likes of the Chivas USA fans and the atmosphere they create that’ll most likely persuade people to stay. Not that you’d know that from reading the US press.
“Beckhams to save America and get us out of Iraq!” screams a headline in one
magazine. It’s a piss-take of countless mindlessly repetitive “Can Becks save soccer in America?” articles.
Save it from what exactly? Hard as it may be for outsiders to believe – and I speak as an English ex-pat – football is doing quite well over here, thank you. Beckham knows that. That’s why he’s here.
Meanwhile the pre-shocks of the imminent Bexquake are being felt all over LA, where Beckham billboards are starting to pop up. Most Galaxy fans say they’re “stoked” or “psyched” and, as British-born, LA-based soccer broadcaster Steven Cohen says, “The women of LA are all aflutter.”
Indeed, every female glazes over and grins at the very mention. A thirtysomething soccer mum and newly-minted Galaxy season ticket holder playing with her kids in an LA park – just yards from a game between two sets of Chivas fans – screams “Whoooooooo! Beck-ham! Yeah!” Then she punches the air and runs in a small circle. And then hides behind her husband and refuses to give her name.
“When I told her I’d got season tickets,” grins the soccer-mad hubbie, “I was worried she’d ask me how much. All she said was: ‘How close?’”
The City of Angels is in the deceptively calm eye of the Beckham storm. Tommy Mack, 37-year-old member of Galaxy’s Riot Squad – an unofficial supporters group “with the emphasis on songs, chants, and massive amounts of booze” – feels relaxed enough to joke about it.
“Everybody’s heard of Beckham,” he says. “They don’t know why, they don’t know how, but his ‘Q’ rating is rather high for a soccer player. Unfortunately, in Los Angeles, you can also achieve this amount of interest by killing someone in a creative manner. So you tell me, imported soccer royalty, or OJ Simpson?”
The gossip mags keep the pot boiling with a series of increasingly ridiculous
stories about Victoria. She’s apparently searching for a private school that will provide the boys with their own personal soccer pitch. And she’s also insisting on a mansion with separate master bedrooms.
Posh is also photographed shopping with new best mate Katie Holmes. And Tom Cruise is giving David advice on where to live. The late night talk show hosts are still making Spice Girls and “nobody-in-America-likes-soccer” jokes. They’re lame and out of date. But they’re still making them.
All-female LA soccer podcast The Treble even features a regular “Beckham gossip” spot where the soccer-mad trio gleefully pull apart the latest rumours. “Posh is really hot with the press right now,” says Jennifer Robertson. “OK, so our view is skewed, but everybody we know is asking us about Beckham. I mean everybody!”
“The MLS really needs more gossip,” says her mysteriously forename-only colleague “Nicolle”, who confesses that before Beckham’s arrival they used to
deliberately spread “pretty scandalous and seedy” rumours about squeaky clean and rather boring players like Cobi Jones just to make the league seem more interesting.
Away from LA and gossip-hungry females, fans of other MLS teams are understandably less agog – but they’re still awaiting BecksDay with some glee. “As DC United fans, my family can’t wait to see what the burden of being a travelling circus does to the hated Galaxy,” laughs Bryan James. “My wife was in LA recently and Galaxy fans Joe Six Packs and Jane Housecat were all talking about Posh and Becks. Will Posh take Paula Abdul’s spot on American Idol? Will Becks make soccer more relevant than hockey? Will Landon Donovan cry about not being the biggest fish in the pond?”
But there’s one group of Los Angeles soccer fans who care little for David Beckham. “What good is he going to be? It’s going to be a circus,” shrugs 40-year-old construction worker and Mexican citizen Obios “Obi” Mossaro,
unofficial leader of the Chivas Legion de Kalifas, an LA-based grass roots supporters organisation largely comprised of Mexican Americans. And they make every other supporters group in America look like the Anthony Callea fan club on Valium.
As far as the Legion is concerned, Beckham is a pampered, past-his-sell-by-date, show pony.
“He’s just an actor!” smiles Pillow, 21.
“Posh Spice? Who is she? No, seriously, who is she?” asks 41-year-old Wera.
“She’s his wife,” chips in Rocker, 21.
“Yeah, I know that,” says Wera, “but who is she?”
Despite this hostility-tinged indifference, when I first meet 26-year-old Legionnaire Aspa, he’s wearing a red England shirt and despite his explanation – “I just like the colour! Red, like Chivas!” – he changes before I can read the number on the back.
Are they all secret Beckham lovers after all? He certainly doesn’t feature in any of the Legion’s anti-Galaxy chants – and there are plenty of them.
“Why would we bother?” says Obi. “If I had to rate Beckham on scale of one to ten? Zero. Landon Donovan is a better player. Beckham is just a movie star.”
“Amazing! Chivas fans have finally learned how to speak!” retorts the Riot Squad’s Tommy Mack. “We were getting concerned for their evolutionary well-being. On the other hand, Chivas USA was founded on the concept of bringing over-the-hill Mexican soccer stars to Los Angeles, so I’ll call them on their hypocrisy and invite them to a nice refreshing cup of Shut The Hell Up.”
Me-ow. Inside the stadium the Legion and the Riot Squad roar at each other
across the pitch. Meanwhile Chivas fan Diana Rosa Germano from The Treble finds herself in among newish Galaxy supporters: “All you can hear is people talking ‘Beckham, Beckham, Beckham’. I’m like, ‘Shut up! There’s a game on and he’s not even playing!’”
“What the fuck! Who the hell are they!” asks the guy in front of me, taking a nervous step back as the crazy carnival of Spanish-chanting lunatics reminds Los Angeles that this is not a “sports” event – this is futbol!
“That’s the Chivas fans,” I tell him.
“Wow!” he says, obviously astonished. “Is it always like this?”
This is his first “soccer” game. You get the feeling it won’t be his last. He came because of David Beckham, as did 7000 new LA Galaxy season ticket holders. Even though Goldenballs isn’t here yet. In fact ticket sales have soared right across the country. When Beckham first signed to the MLS franchise, the US media had a collective fit. When he actually turns up to play, they’ll have an even bigger one. The hype is boiling nicely.
But, as the chanting, tattooed, pogoing, smoke-bomb tossing, goat-faced wrestling mask wearing Chivas fans prove, Bexmania isn’t the only mania in town. An increasing number of American soccer fans are seeking to recreate the passion, energy, spontaneity and noise they see and hear at European and Latin American games. Already these fans are helping save MLS games from the sterile, spoon-fed, Disneyfied McFandom that ruins the atmosphere at most other US sports.
Beckham might lure tens of thousands of Americans to soccer, but it’s the likes of the Chivas USA fans and the atmosphere they create that’ll most likely persuade people to stay. Not that you’d know that from reading the US press.
“Beckhams to save America and get us out of Iraq!” screams a headline in one
magazine. It’s a piss-take of countless mindlessly repetitive “Can Becks save soccer in America?” articles.
Save it from what exactly? Hard as it may be for outsiders to believe – and I speak as an English ex-pat – football is doing quite well over here, thank you. Beckham knows that. That’s why he’s here.
Meanwhile the pre-shocks of the imminent Bexquake are being felt all over LA, where Beckham billboards are starting to pop up. Most Galaxy fans say they’re “stoked” or “psyched” and, as British-born, LA-based soccer broadcaster Steven Cohen says, “The women of LA are all aflutter.”
Indeed, every female glazes over and grins at the very mention. A thirtysomething soccer mum and newly-minted Galaxy season ticket holder playing with her kids in an LA park – just yards from a game between two sets of Chivas fans – screams “Whoooooooo! Beck-ham! Yeah!” Then she punches the air and runs in a small circle. And then hides behind her husband and refuses to give her name.
“When I told her I’d got season tickets,” grins the soccer-mad hubbie, “I was worried she’d ask me how much. All she said was: ‘How close?’”
The City of Angels is in the deceptively calm eye of the Beckham storm. Tommy Mack, 37-year-old member of Galaxy’s Riot Squad – an unofficial supporters group “with the emphasis on songs, chants, and massive amounts of booze” – feels relaxed enough to joke about it.
“Everybody’s heard of Beckham,” he says. “They don’t know why, they don’t know how, but his ‘Q’ rating is rather high for a soccer player. Unfortunately, in Los Angeles, you can also achieve this amount of interest by killing someone in a creative manner. So you tell me, imported soccer royalty, or OJ Simpson?”
The gossip mags keep the pot boiling with a series of increasingly ridiculous
stories about Victoria. She’s apparently searching for a private school that will provide the boys with their own personal soccer pitch. And she’s also insisting on a mansion with separate master bedrooms.
Posh is also photographed shopping with new best mate Katie Holmes. And Tom Cruise is giving David advice on where to live. The late night talk show hosts are still making Spice Girls and “nobody-in-America-likes-soccer” jokes. They’re lame and out of date. But they’re still making them.
All-female LA soccer podcast The Treble even features a regular “Beckham gossip” spot where the soccer-mad trio gleefully pull apart the latest rumours. “Posh is really hot with the press right now,” says Jennifer Robertson. “OK, so our view is skewed, but everybody we know is asking us about Beckham. I mean everybody!”
“The MLS really needs more gossip,” says her mysteriously forename-only colleague “Nicolle”, who confesses that before Beckham’s arrival they used to
deliberately spread “pretty scandalous and seedy” rumours about squeaky clean and rather boring players like Cobi Jones just to make the league seem more interesting.
Away from LA and gossip-hungry females, fans of other MLS teams are understandably less agog – but they’re still awaiting BecksDay with some glee. “As DC United fans, my family can’t wait to see what the burden of being a travelling circus does to the hated Galaxy,” laughs Bryan James. “My wife was in LA recently and Galaxy fans Joe Six Packs and Jane Housecat were all talking about Posh and Becks. Will Posh take Paula Abdul’s spot on American Idol? Will Becks make soccer more relevant than hockey? Will Landon Donovan cry about not being the biggest fish in the pond?”
But there’s one group of Los Angeles soccer fans who care little for David Beckham. “What good is he going to be? It’s going to be a circus,” shrugs 40-year-old construction worker and Mexican citizen Obios “Obi” Mossaro,
unofficial leader of the Chivas Legion de Kalifas, an LA-based grass roots supporters organisation largely comprised of Mexican Americans. And they make every other supporters group in America look like the Anthony Callea fan club on Valium.
As far as the Legion is concerned, Beckham is a pampered, past-his-sell-by-date, show pony.
“He’s just an actor!” smiles Pillow, 21.
“Posh Spice? Who is she? No, seriously, who is she?” asks 41-year-old Wera.
“She’s his wife,” chips in Rocker, 21.
“Yeah, I know that,” says Wera, “but who is she?”
Despite this hostility-tinged indifference, when I first meet 26-year-old Legionnaire Aspa, he’s wearing a red England shirt and despite his explanation – “I just like the colour! Red, like Chivas!” – he changes before I can read the number on the back.
Are they all secret Beckham lovers after all? He certainly doesn’t feature in any of the Legion’s anti-Galaxy chants – and there are plenty of them.
“Why would we bother?” says Obi. “If I had to rate Beckham on scale of one to ten? Zero. Landon Donovan is a better player. Beckham is just a movie star.”
“Amazing! Chivas fans have finally learned how to speak!” retorts the Riot Squad’s Tommy Mack. “We were getting concerned for their evolutionary well-being. On the other hand, Chivas USA was founded on the concept of bringing over-the-hill Mexican soccer stars to Los Angeles, so I’ll call them on their hypocrisy and invite them to a nice refreshing cup of Shut The Hell Up.”
Me-ow. Inside the stadium the Legion and the Riot Squad roar at each other
across the pitch. Meanwhile Chivas fan Diana Rosa Germano from The Treble finds herself in among newish Galaxy supporters: “All you can hear is people talking ‘Beckham, Beckham, Beckham’. I’m like, ‘Shut up! There’s a game on and he’s not even playing!’”
Related Articles
Spanish club invite Aussie junior Beckham Baker for trial
Taylor’s tale of Beckham, Ljubo and Newcastle’s big night
