In case you missed it, presumably because you just got off the midnight shuttle from the Planet Zepton and/or are awakening from a lengthy coma, there was a big ceremony in London yesterday.
The Royal Family Inc. celebrated the recruitment of a new brood mare and everyone put on their best bib and tucker and sat there pretending to have forgotten what happened to the last one, while her ex-husband sat in the front row next to a bridge troll, hopefully glancing over at Mummy for signs of ill health.
(And that leaves aside the unfortunate "Fergie", who is currently out in California doing bondage porn or something)
The cameras, as is their wont, dutifully noted the presence of Williams' pal David
..who was of course there with his lovely better half, Greedy Spice.
Now comes the news that, dues to his 15,000 mile round trip he HAS GOTTEN PERMISSION to skip the Galaxys' match this weekend, another item which will further endear him to LA fans everywhere.
(Sepp Blatter, who considers himself – literally – to be the social equivalent of a Head of State, and who loves ceremonies and medals and fancy uniforms as much as Hermann Goering ever did, was reportedly very unhappy to find himself left off the guest list. It seems that Prince William, who is the honorary head of the England FA and was a very active member of their World Cup 2018 bid team, felt that Blatter, among others, lied to his face in the hours leading up to the voting and, shockingly, holds a grudge.
FIFA issued a pathetic media statement a few days ago breathlessly announcing that Blatter had sent the Bride and Groom letter, "congratulating them on their upcoming nuptuals", as if anyone at all gave a crap but Blatter just can't pass up an opportunity to make himself look lame and clueless.)
Having just stumbled across another in the seemingly endless stream of "Beckham Experiment A Failure" articles which are been being cranked out by every halfwit sportswriter and blogger on the continent – some of whom don't post at Bleacher Report though judging by their lack of brain cells they sure ought to – I find myself wondering whether that headline or "Much Adu About Freddy" is the leader in the "Hackneyed Soccer Cliche of the Century" competition.
Now, it's true that in the BigSoccer division of labor, kicking David Beckham around is Dan Loney's portfolio, and he, along with every other Galaxy fan, has every right. Their interest is limited to seeing their team win games and cups and stuff and it's hard to argue that Beckham has made much of a contribution in that regard.
But the rest of us are free to take a broader view of the whole affair and, frankly, those "Beckham Experiment" posts, every single one of them, misses the point like Kei Kamara missing a sitter.
David Beckham was brought over here to be David Beckham, and he's done a brilliant job of it.
Granted, he's extremely well qualified to be David Beckham. In fact, I can't think of anyone better for the job. He does it splendidly.
But for all of our supposed sophistication and footballing savvy and all that claptrap, and after however many years it's been and after 87 gajillion (by actual count) media commentaries on the subject, we're still reading about how many games he's played in and how many goals he doesn't have and how much he cost AEG (as if that mattered to anyone) and how many games he's missed due to injury and blah, blah, blah.
And every one of them – again, Dan and all his fellow Gals fans aside – are completely obtuse and mind numbingly dense.
It just doesn't matter. It never did.
Because unlike MLS, which has to tie a pork chop around its neck to get a puppy to play with it, HRH Prince William Windsor can choose whoever he likes to be his pal, and it's not based on who did or didn't hit a hat trick for LA last Saturday. Beckham isn't the flavor of the week and he doesn't rely on hat tricks to get newspaper column space.
He's not like anyone else. If it was goals they wanted that money would have easily accomplished a lot more if it had been spent on someone else.
And it's not even, as the conventional wisdom has it, about selling tickets; Garber & Co. weren't stupid enough to think that three or four years down the road the guy would still be selling out buildings over here. They know as well as anyone that novelty is a fleeting thing; the frenzy was always going to die down and the magazine writers would quit coming around and the crowd of photographers would dwindle.
Beckham is bigger than that. There's nobody like him. If you're looking for me to explain it, I can't. It just is.
To put it in simple terms, Beckham is cool and hanging out with him makes you cooler and MLS, having been allowed to sit at the same lunch table as Becks and Vicky for however long it's been are cooler because of it.
If you were looking for something else, you should have sprung for Henry.
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